Visitors
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Video: Steven Soderbergh Talks About Koyaanistqatsi Director Godfrey Reggio’s Work
“I saw Koyaanisqatsi in 1983, when it came out, so I was 20,” Steven Soderbergh explains in this interview clip about Godfrey Reggio’s influence on his work. “It was pretty significant to be that age and an aspiring filmmaker and to see that.” Soderbergh has long been vocal about his admiration for Reggio’s movies, having served as one of the presenters of the Qatsi trilogy as well for the director’s latest film, last year’s Visitors. The film is available for DVD, Blu-Ray and digital download purchase tomorrow. [jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”86264″]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 9, 2014 -
Visitors’ Godfrey Reggio on 4K, Black and White Cinematography, Long Cuts and Philip Glass
For our Winter issue, experimental documentarian Godfrey Reggio, along with his producer Jon Kane and d.p. Trish Govani, explored the significance of selected stills from his latest film Visitors. A revealing exercise for any filmmaker, Reggio’s excerpts carry far more weight than they would for most: the eight shots account for more than 10% of the film. Comprised of only 74, 4K black and white shots, the Philip Glass-scored Visitors is a meditation on the act of spectatorship, as the viewer unflinchingly gazes at 70+ second takes of faces, swamplands, disembodied hands and the moon. In the above video for The Creators Project, Reggio extols […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 26, 2014 -
Observe & Report: Godfrey Reggio, Jon Kane and Trish Govoni on “the Perfected Image” of Visitors
Alternately lulling and urgent, otherworldly and deeply intimate, visionary filmmaker Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors is a film like no other. With its 74 shots — most feature films have hundreds if not thousands — and exquisite black-and-white imagery, it is, as Reggio says, “the odd one in” in today’s multiplex environment. And even with its Philip Glass score — mournful, haunting and one of the composer’s best — it still feels radically different than Reggio and Glass’s previous collaborations, the poetic films comprising the “Qatsi Trilogy.” No less visually seductive than those works, the non-narrative Visitors uses its images — which […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 17, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors
The premiere of Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors, hosted by Steven Soderbergh and with Phillip Glass’s score performed live by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, was my most singular experience at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. As I wrote in the current issue of Filmmaker: Glass’s haunting soundtrack is among his best, while Reggio’s film is a radical departure from hyperkinetic works like Koyanisquatsi that presaged the visual language of our connected age. Shot in black-and-white and containing less than 60 cuts, the lulling Visitors is mournful yet concerned elegy for a world in which experience has been subsumed by spectatorship. Amusement parks […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2013 -
Toronto International Film Festival 2013
With 288 films unfolding over 11 days, the Toronto International Film Festival offers just about every type of viewing experience imaginable, with every viewer becoming their own curator, cherry-picking from within their favorite sections. Business types congregate around the big acquisition titles. Cineastes check out the greats of world cinema, arriving in Toronto after Cannes. Discoverers peruse the Vanguard section searching for new talent. But what’s less often commented upon are the viewing experiences a large festival like Toronto produces for viewers intending to sample from it all. Entering a theater involves, before the lights dim, a mental recalibration, an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2013 -
We are the Visitors: On Godfrey Reggio’s Masterwork
The Toronto International Film Festival this year permitted me to look back and remember the first independent movie I ever saw when I was 15 years old, Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. That film made me want to run away from home and make movies, and I did. This year I saw his new film, Only Lovers Left Alive, as well as another film by a director whose work was formative for me. The same year I saw Down By Law I was listening to cassette tapes of Philip Glass, music I had taped from vinyl albums belonging to people […]
by Alison Murray on Sep 9, 2013
