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MacDonald:
What's the current state of
Naqoyqatsi
?
Reggio:
We have a concept and a dramaturgical structure. We know how long the film will take to produce and post-produce. In fact, Philip and I have been working on the film since Christmas of 1985, so we're ready to move. I've gotten a third of the money earmarked from European sources, and I'm working with George Lucas, who is the co-executive producer on this film, to interest other sources. My problem is that the box office projections, as a result of the last film, don't add up to six million dollars (my budget for
Naqoygatsi
)though all of us feel that neither film has really been exploited to its full potential. What I am clear and happy about is that the films can have longevity, and are "repeatables"that's an industry term: people can see them more than once, and I think both films will stay around a long time. When the third film is finished, there'll be a trilogy to offer.
MacDonald:
What will the new film be like?
Reggio:
Fifty to seventy percent of the film, assuming I get the images I want, will be stock and archival footage. We'll print that footage; we'll recompose it; we'll cross frame it; we'll do opticals on it; we'll extend or constrict the grain structure; we'll manipulate it. And then we'll shoot the other fifty percent of the film. The principal photography will be the "outside look," seeing the present from the point of view of the past. The stock and archival footage will be the "inside look," the visual vernacular that people's minds, eyes, imaginations are drenched in by virtue of being part of Media World. We'll try to reposition the context of those stock and archival images so they can be looked at in a new way.
Naqoy
means "war";
qatsi
means "life"in its compound: "war as a way of life." But this is not a film about the battlefield. It's a film about sanctioned aggression against the force of life, how we confuse human freedom with our pursuit of technological "happiness'' or material affluence. Essentially, the film will be about the death of naturenot in an ecological sense, though that'll be includedbut the death of nature as the
host of life,
as the place where life is lived, and how it has been replaced with the synthetic world we live in. I think the film will be timely. I hope it will allow us to rename the world we live in, albeit with the very limited resources of a film.