Gave up on Powaqqatsi
6 Jun 2008 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firecatI loved the movie Koyaanisqatsi and it stood up well to a recent viewing, but the OH and I tried to watch Powaqqatsi for the first time and we gave up on it about an hour in.
For some reason the lack of context for the images bothered me in Powaqqatsi in a way that it didn't in Koyaanisqatsi. There was a section early on where they were cutting from one marketplace to another very fast and it bugged me that I didn't know where they were. Probably has something to do with my lack of knowledge of the geography and cultures shown in Powaqqatsi (whereas Koyaanisqatsi was photographed in the US and Europe so the landscape and cities looked familiar).
There was another section where they were showing a lot of different ethnic dances, but all in slo-mo with Philip Glass music on top of them, so they all ended up looking and sounding the same. I guess the message was something like "We all do these dances" but to me glomming them together like that seemed somewhat disrespectful of the cultures and dances in question. (The OH used the term "cultural imperialism.")
For some reason the lack of context for the images bothered me in Powaqqatsi in a way that it didn't in Koyaanisqatsi. There was a section early on where they were cutting from one marketplace to another very fast and it bugged me that I didn't know where they were. Probably has something to do with my lack of knowledge of the geography and cultures shown in Powaqqatsi (whereas Koyaanisqatsi was photographed in the US and Europe so the landscape and cities looked familiar).
There was another section where they were showing a lot of different ethnic dances, but all in slo-mo with Philip Glass music on top of them, so they all ended up looking and sounding the same. I guess the message was something like "We all do these dances" but to me glomming them together like that seemed somewhat disrespectful of the cultures and dances in question. (The OH used the term "cultural imperialism.")
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Date: 10 Jun 2008 08:10 am (UTC)Hugs!
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Date: 10 Jun 2008 08:15 am (UTC)