Baraka

[ER]

Baraka was made in 1992 and I'm only now hearing about it?!!! Excellent film. I admire the structure of this unnarrated motion picture and just can't believe I've never heard of it.

If you've not heard of it, either, and for all I know there are a dozen threads floating around here about it, here's a link to its IMDB entry:


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767/

It is now on Blu-ray, and does more justice to that format than anything else I've watched.

[Rev. Powell]

Sounds like the same basic idea as Koyaanisqatsi.

I've never seen any movies of this type.  Honestly, they seem like they would try the patience.  But almost everyone who sees them seems to love them, so I'm open to trying them one of these days.

[Neville]

I was lucky enough to watch it a theatre back in the days. It's a very good film, the images themselves are riveting, and I like the fact that you barely hear any human voice during the whole film, save for a scene that shows the natives chanting. Makes you look at the world in a very different light, because basically all movies out there only care about people / characters, instead of the world itself.

I think the film is part of a trilogy or something, one of the other films being that "Koyaanisqatsi" Rev. Powell mentioned. Check out the IMDB, they'll probably mention the other entries somewhere.

[Rev. Powell]

I think the film is part of a trilogy or something, one of the other films being that "Koyaanisqatsi" Rev. Powell mentioned. Check out the IMDB, they'll probably mention the other entries somewhere.

The other two films in the "Koyaanisqatsi trilogy" are Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, and there's also the related short Anima Mundi.  All of these were scored by Phillip Glass and are sometimes considered as music/film collaborations, with the composition being of equal importance to the images and not just accompaniment.  "Baraka" seems to be from an unrelated director, but one certainly inluenced by "Koyaanisqatsi".

[Neville]

Just learnt from Wikipedia that director Ron Fricke was a cinematographer in "Koyaanisqatsi". That makes the film related to said trilogy.

[Mofo Rising]

I'm quite a fan of this film, although I haven't seen the other related trilogy.

Some of the images are quite fascinating, such as the chicken processing plant with all the baby chicks shooting through industrial machinery. Quite bizarre.

If you're a fan of PC strategy, the game Alpha Centauri used images from this film in its movies. The easiest one to spot is the kabuki guy with the slow look of dawning horror tearing across his face.

The below YouTube clip features the song "Host of the Seraphim" by Dead Can Dance, which was also recently used in the movie The Mist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJhVM930YXY