Just watched it for my Ethics Final

It's been 4 years since you posted. Have you seen the other two movies yet?

This is very definitely the middle between the beginning and the end of the Qatsi Trilogy, and the momentum of its message is magnified for maximum impact when it is experienced as a single theme.

Not necessarily at one sitting! *although I myself have done that many times.

The power and meaning of that single theme, - that Technology has increasingly replaced Nature as the environment in which human beings live and work, - is evidenced in each of the three films. But the most profound revelation comes by acceleration and accumulation throughout the course of the entire Trilogy:

In greater and lesser degrees, everywhere in the world, in every human culture, ancient and modern, the human Way of Life *(Qatsi) has become crazily Out of Balance *(Koyaannis) resulting in a dangerous and destructive Transformation *(Powaq) of ordinary living into desperate daily struggles of rage, madness, and mortality. Everyday Life lived as if it were War *(Naqoy.)

This middle film is called Powaqqatsi. A fair translation from the Hopi would be "Life in Transformation." We often think of "transformation" as a positive process, such as the caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

However, the title is derived from "Powaq," an evil shaman or black wizard who exercises the power of subtle seduction to entice other people into some sort of selfish travesty against their own Life Force: to lie, cheat, steal.

When a human is persuaded or tricked into committing such transgressions, a Powaq has vision to see the Life Force evaporate from their soul, and power to harvest this energy for his own benefit. Some of these wicked Powaqqa were reputed to live for a thousand years or more in this way.

These movies are NOT any kind of exposition on Hopi religion, culture, legend, or any other specific religion culture or legend, for that matter. The films were originally conceived to be released without any titles at all. Exquisitely expressing these complex concepts with a single English word? Impossible. It is a sort of miracle that these (ancient) Hopi words were discovered which contain the harmonic meaning of the theme, without revealing it to prejudice the minds of audiences to expect something or other on the basis of Titles alone.

The films could have no name, or a made up nonsense name, but it just so happens that the three elements of the Theme, "Life out of Balance," a crazy, insane, frenetic way of living which leads to "Life in Transformation" (in the sense of wasting the power of natural spiritual purity by squandering it on lesser, material gratifications through greed and avarice) which then leads to "Life Lived as War," a way of life that is empty of joy and happiness, but filled with strife and anger and desperation, the constant threat of death and destruction.

And so you have KOYAANISQATSI, "Life out of Balance,"
and then you have POWAQQATSI, "Life in Transformation"
and finally you have NAQOYQATSI, "Life Lived as War"

Entirely without dialogue, the depiction of Technology displacing Nature as the environment in which human beings . . . and pretty much the rest of the planet, plants and animals, too, have come to live. But especially the humans.

Each of these three movies is a sensuous symphony complete in and of itself. Experienced within the context of the entire Trilogy, each one resonates to even deeper harmonies, forming a fusion of sight and sound much greater than the sum of its parts.

I do recommend getting all 3 DVD's - and report back to us if you can.

"by the end i was touched. In a bad way i want to die now because of what we have done to the earth, but i want to see the other two films. "

Oh geez...that's what I hate about the Qatsi films...it brings out the self-loathing Liberal
in all of us.