Ron Fricke is person who made Koyaanisqatsi the beautiful visual journey that it is. I would recommend watching any of his other works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Fricke (FWIW, Powaqqatsi is also pretty good, but I would strongly suggest avoiding Naqoyqatsi which is just not very good).

I have seen all three and don't recall ever making qualitative comparisons with anyone regarding the 3.

Despite that, I agree with their conclusions.

I'd say Naqoyqatsi has all the qualities of the first two movies, except in the area of visuals. The score is phenomenal, up there with Glass' best.

Fascinating, I thought that Naqoyqatsi was better than Powaqqatsi. Maybe I should rewatch both again.

Samsara is pretty great as well, mostly because of the impeccable cinematography and shelling out for 70mm film and lugging cameras and lenses which film in 70mm around the world.

This. Koyaanisqatsi might be more important in cinematic history, but Baraka is actually enjoyable to watch.

IMHO the best use for Koyaanisqatsi is as an answer when playing charades.

I find Koyaanisqatsi very enjoyable to watch.

Back in the 90s a bunch of us watched the whole movie by accident. Somehow it came up in conversation and the guy whose house we were in happened to have a copy on VHS and he put it in and we got so mesmerized that while we only intended to watch a few minutes of it, we watched the whole thing.

There are two “sequels” to Koyaanisqatsi: Powisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, both also with Philip Glass soundtracks.

I hugely prefer Koy to Baraka, but the world takes all sorts. Baraka just feels like a lot of nice vignettes in random sequence. Koy walks through themes, builds upon them, then repeats them. It's more like a symphony.

I think the aesthetic of Koyaanisqatsi had a large effect of on film aesthetics. Breaking Bad's best scenes IMO were the Timelapses which I found very reminiscent Koyaanisqatsi.

> Koyaanisqatsi might be more important in cinematic history, but Baraka is actually enjoyable to watch.

To each his own. I'm not sure I'd call watching Koyaanisqatsi exactly "enjoyable" (that sounds like it's cheapening the experience), but I've seen it at least 5 times.

Preview with The Host Of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance:

https://vimeo.com/188504388

When thinking of Baraka and Koyaanisqatai, I think of Bodysong— similar and very excellent. But music by Radiohead.

Thanks for mentioning this. Big fan of Philip Glass and Radiohead. I’m listening to the soundtrack right now. It’s good!

Thanks for sharing. Baraka is one of my favorite movies and one the the very few Bluray disks I actually own. It was one of the last movies to be shot entirely in 70mm[0]. At the time Ebert declared it the finest video disk ever made[1]. There was a recent 8K reissue of Baraka, but I have not seen it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_70_mm_films

[1] https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1941

In addition to Baraka and especially Samsara (the best known film in this genre), I'd suggest the films of Nikolaus Geyrhalter. "Our Daily Bread" is a really good film looking at food production specifically.

Baraka is outstanding and the stronger of the two films imo.