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decoration for the mythic adventures of Western swashbucklers, but as individuals functioning in day-to-day life. In order to effect this change in perspective, Reggio uses a different set of techniques. Instead of time lapse, which almost inevitably reduces individual actions to patterns, Reggio exploits slow motion, which not only allows us to see individual motions in precise detail, but reveals the grace and dignity of forms of physical labor rendered trivial or repellent in conventional cinema.
Powaqqatsi
is an immense montage of individuals laboringand to a lesser degree, celebrating, worshiping, relaxingin Peru, Brasil, Kenya, Egypt, Nepal, and India. The focus on third-world labor is contextualized by sequences that represent the allure of the industrialized world, especially as it is marketed on television, an allure that, as
Powaqqatsi
reveals, is already transforming the Southern Hemisphere: one of the film's organizational principles is the juxtaposition of the beauty of life and labor in natural settings and the frenzy of labor in the third-world city.
Reggio has frequently been criticized for his naïveté in participating in the very patterns he pretends to abhor:
Koyaanisqatsi
is an antitechnology film
but
it was produced not only with technological means but with the most technologically advanced cinematic means available;
Powaqqatsi
sings the dignity of the laboring, third-world individual
but
provides no information about the individuals filmed, rendering them socially decontextualized exotics: indeed, Reggio's "adventure" in filming his second feature can be seen as a form of swashbuckling. As is clear in the discussion that follows, Reggio has thought about these charges, but whether the reader is satisfied with Reggio's explanations or not, he must be given credit for what he
has
accomplished. He has made visually arresting nonnarrative feature films that generate considerable thought and discussion in the audiences that see them, and he has brought his vision to a substantial audience, while refusing to reconfirm crucial ideological conventions of much of the commercial cinema.
I spoke with Reggio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in March 1990.
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MacDonald:
I understand that before you became a filmmaker, you were a member of the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic monk.
Reggio:
Until I was twenty-eight.
MacDonald:
I'm curious about how you went from that life to making a 35mm feature film.
Reggio:
Well, one of the vows you take as a Christian Brother is to