Visitors

Thirty years after Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio – with the support of Philip Glass and Jon Kane – once again leapfrogs over earth-bound filmmakers and creates another stunning, wordless portrait of modern life.

In 1982 Godfrey Reggio became an overnight art-house sensation with Koyaanisqatsi. That genuinely pioneering film used cascading images and a hypnotic score to create a then-unprecedented cinematic experience: no narrative, no dialogue, no safety net, just an audience in direct confrontation with the immensity of the screen, and with Reggio’s poetic vision.

Twelve years after the completion of what became known as the Qatsi Trilogy, Visitors places the audience in another, rather different kind of confrontation. Collaborating once again with composer Philip Glass, Reggio here presents a slow, richly monochrome series of shots – just 74 in the entire movie – mostly of human faces. That premise sounds simple, but the shock of the encounter is hard to describe, and as this astonishingly moving and beautiful film unfolds, it becomes a form of profound meditation, perhaps even a secular prayer.