Godfrey Reggio

A former Roman Catholic monk who was asked to leave his order in 1968 because of his political activities, Godfrey Reggio eventually moved into TV as a means of spotlighting problems he was encountering as a social worker. His non-narrative feature films, "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), which examined life in North America, and "Powaqqatsi" (1988), which examined the native cultures of Africa, the Middle East, India and South America, continued to explore such issues, though they are primarily seen as hallucinatory visual feasts, making liberal use of slow-motion and stop-motion techniques and set to the hypnotic music of Philip Glass. Indeed, in retrospect, Reggio's films appear to be a harbinger of the MTV style that came to dominate the 1990s, one which married image and score to create a unique aural and visual experience. He lent the same craft to his short films, "Anima Mundi" (1991) and "Evidence" (1994). Since 1988, Reggio has been trying to raise the funding for the third in his "Qatsi" trilogy. The proposed film, "Naqqyqatsi," would examine the effects of technology on the world. Reggio expected to utilize existing stock footage which he would manipulate digitally.