Visitors from Godfrey Reggio

Screening of the documentary “Visitors” , written and directed by Godfrey Reggio in 2013.
Friday 5th February 2016 from 8pm at Can Monroig, Inca

Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey Reggio Before becoming a filmmaker, he was a monk. For fourteen years he practiced the monastic demands of fasting, silence and prayer. Little did he know that in the same monastery, and thanks to the advice of one of his companions, he would make a discovery that would change his life.
On an ordinary day of his monastic routine, Reggio saw the film The Forgotten Ones, of Luis BunuelThe spiritual experience that the rigors of religious observance had not provided suddenly arrived through cinema. A monk died to see the birth of a filmmaker.

Cult director, known worldwide for his Quatsi trilogy, which includes the films Koyaanisquatsi (Life Out of Balance, 1982), Powaggatsi (Life in Transformation, 1988) and Nagoyquatsi, 2002, a trilogy to which Reggio dedicated 28 years and in which he offers an apocalyptic vision that describes the ever-increasing distance between image and reality.
 Reggio says: “If we could see with our imagination the rubbish and pollution we generate every day, it would be like seeing hell; everything is thrown away in a living being, the Earth is alive, the Earth gives us life, it has air, it produces energy, it gives us sustenance and we take it and destroy it, we no longer live on the Earth, but we live at its expense.”
The trilogy was applauded by critics, as it presented a visual proposal different from the commercial one, without dialogues, with images at different speeds accompanied by the music of the renowned American composer Philip Glass.

In 2013, at the age of 75, after five years of preparation, with the support of Philip Glass and Jon Kane, Reggio creates another impressive wordless portrait of modern life.
The 87-minute documentary has no dialogue, its black-and-white photography is impeccable and presents us with images of faces in a state of contemplation, city landscapes, imposing buildings and ruined places, among other scenes, which are accompanied by symphonic pieces composed by Phillip Glass, who has already become part of the hallmark of Reggio films.

A few months ago Brigitte Lucke, photographer, historian, art critic, editor of the art magazine “Mallorca Culture” Brigitte Reggio, a personal friend of Godfrey Reggio, suggested that we screen the director’s latest documentary, “Visitors”, at Can Monroig. Brigitte interviewed the director at his home in Santa Fe (New Mexico) in 2008. The article was published in issue 8 of the magazine “Cultura Mallorca”, and we have selected some excerpts from the interview:

“It’s a film made by a lot of people; by artists who were willing, as it turned out, to give up their own vision in order to let their talent, their contribution, their own vision… and they all end up breathing the same air. And when this happens, the energy comes together, you can see that everyone is breathing the same breath, as if they had one heart.(…)”

“It’s not that I don’t use language because I don’t have a love for it, but because I feel that language no longer describes the world we live in. I think language is who we are, it’s how we see the world, it’s that magical event, whatever it is, that happened 40 thousand years ago, that no one can explain, that which allows us to deal with life beyond, in another dimension, the unknown magical power; it’s all about language, it’s a memory (…) language is poetry, language is a provocation, language is a trigger that can open your own dialogue to the public (…) and I use it to create the form of a film, a film that has no words (…)”

“If you make the image speak for itself, if you give it a presence… yes, you order the images and the music becomes the narration of the film.”

“I consider the present world lost and I would like to have the courage to say that I consider the world lost, so that at the same time I can have the hope of creating another world. So I see the world as an unpleasant future, which I consider totally impossible, I see no reformism, no ism, no national slogan, no global unification. A more global world makes me think of fascism.(…)”

“We are creating a world, a people, an idea, and now the world is being held back by this monstrous fusion of cultures. By the time my granddaughter dies, there will be less than ten percent of human languages left on the planet. We have already lost more than 24,000 languages in the last hundred years, it is something unspeakable, indescribable, unnameable, so… in that sense I do make a judgment. But I don’t want to tell people what I think, I want to offer them a canvas of the mirror that I am showing to the world. (…)”

“These films are made of thousands of images that offer you a world, to rename the world, to reclaim your person, your ability to read and write, not in terms of how you read, but how you name the world you live in. That is the intention. How to rename it. Since it is free, you can think whatever you want. (…)

Diagram used by G. Reggio for the creation of Visitors

Visitors

Related Documentation and Articles:

Goodfrey Reggio and his audiovisual poetry by Alejandra Nájera Mora

The monk who became a filmmaker… by Faena Aleph

Screening location: Can Monroig, Can Valella street no. 22, Inca. (see on google maps)
Tel 871912496, 649186494
Date: Friday, February 5, 2016 at 8 p.m.
By invitation only