Powaqqatsi

The second film in Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy. This time the camera leaves the cities of the north for the south: a gold mine in Brazil, fields in India, a market in Egypt, a mountain road in Peru. No speech, no narrator, no events. Only people working. The word in the title comes from Hopi and describes an entity that consumes the life force of others in order to sustain its own. The argument of the film sits in that single word: who pays for what gets described as development. Philip Glass's score is blended with local recordings and works with rather than under the image. Where the first film ran on time lapse, this one mostly uses slow motion, because the subject is labour rather than speed. Its flaw is the position of the eye. The gaze comes from outside and at times turns people into aesthetic objects, which some critics read as falling into precisely what the film criticises. Who it is for: viewers who like wordless documentary and the music of Glass. Who it is not for: anyone looking for information and argument.