Summary: Godfrey Reggio is an inventor of a film style which creates poetic images of extraordinary emotional impact for audiences worldwide. Reggio is prominent in the film world for his Qatsi trilogy - Koyaanisqatsi: Live Out of Ballance, Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation, and Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, essays of visual images and sound which chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment. Thanks to my friend Tom Lowe, I was very fortunate to attend the premiere of Godfrey's latest film - Visitors. In my view Visitors is one of those fundamentally important films that one simply has to watch. If you are fortunate enough to see the film the way I did - in glorious 4k and accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra live performance of Philip Glass' original music score, then I guarantee it will be a movie experience like no other. And chances are that it will touch and move your heart even if it doesn't do so for your head. I would also suggest that you must go and watch at least Reggio's first film - Koyaanisqatsi. [If you can also see Visitors it will be even better.] Otherwise it is unlikely you will get many of the references we are discussing during the interview. At any rate, during our 1 hour conversation with Godrey Reggio we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is a refugee from another period who had the opportunity to live in the middle ages; the guiding principle behind his life and work; why and how he got interested in film-making; his Qatsi trilogy as another way of seeing the world and how it was adopted by popular culture such as MTV; Visitors and shooting both 4k and Black-and-White; the evolution of Reggio's ideas and his take on the technological singularity... My most favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Godfrey Reggio is: "It's our behavior that determines the content of our mind. [...] We become what we do; we become what we see; we become the routine that we are a part of..." (You can listen to/download the audio file above or watch the video interview in full. If you want to help me produce more episodes please make a donation!) Who is Godfrey Reggio? Born in New Orleans in 1940 and raised in Louisiana, Godfrey Reggio spent 14 years in a Roman Catholic religious order of men (the Christian Brothers) — living in community, dedicated to prayer, study, and teaching. Based in New Mexico during the 1960’s, Reggio taught school, lectured, and co-founded Young Citizens for Action, a community organization project of juvenile street gangs. Following this, Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a Santa Fe community medical clinic, and La Gente, a community organizing project in the barrios of Santa Fe. Based in new Mexico during the sixties, Reggio taught grade school, secondary school and college. In 1963, he co-founded Young Citizens for Action, a community organization project that aided juvenile street gangs. Following this, Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community organizing project in Northern New Mexico's barrios. In 1972, he co-founded the Institute for Regional Education in Santa Fe, a non-profit foundation focused on media development, the arts, community organization and research. In 1974 and 1975, with funding from the American Civil Liberties Union, Reggio co-organized a multi- media public interest campaign on the invasion of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior. Koyaanisqatsi, Reggio's debut as a film director and producer, is the first film of the Qatsi trilogy. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance." Created between 1975 and 1982, the film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass. Powaqqatsi, Reggio's second film,
