Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey Reggio is an American creator of a unique experimental cinematic poetry. He was born in New Orleans in 1940 of a Catholic family lineage established in French Louisiana near 1750. From a soulful beginning in the Church at the age of 14, Reggio passed the ensuing twenty-two years in fasting, long periods of meditative silence, of prayer, vows of life-long poverty, and in choosing to be a monk-friar. It was this ascetic traditional Roman Catholic pontifical teaching Order which ultimately assigned him to the province of Santa Fe, New Mexico. During that ensuing period of his life Reggio served as a teacher at a parochial grade school, a secondary school, and on the faculty of the Christian Brothers College in Santa Fe. Witnessing himself in the secular world as a young intellectually zealous monk schooled in the theology of the middle ages, he accepted nothing, questioned everything, even eventually to the structure of the Church.

Following a spiritual crux concerning personal liberation and social activism, Reggio ultimately left the Pontifical Congregation, Ex Claustrum, in 1968, and thereafter helped found the Institute for Regional Education in Santa Fe,[1] a non-profit foundation focused on civil rights, environmental concerns, media development, radically innovative arts, community organization, and social research. He became a founder of La Clinica de la Gente [2] a facility providing medical care and service to 12,000 community members in northern New Mexico's barrios,[3][4]as well as founding the Young Citizens for Action, a city-wide project aiding juveniles in the street gangs of Santa Fe. He then began working with the American Civil Liberties Union, co-organizing a novel public interest campaign on the technological invasion of privacy, the negative impacts of consumerism, and the increasing use of scientific knowledge and the potency of media to control and shape popular behavior. Godfrey Reggio participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2006.

Reggio is most known for his Qatsi trilogy, which includes the films Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Powaqqatsi (1988), and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The film titles are taken from the Hopi language: Koyaanisqatsi meaning "life out of balance," Powaqqatsi meaning "life in transformation," and Naqoyqatsi meaning "life as war". The soundtracks for all three films were composed by Philip Glass.

In 1995 Reggio directed the short feature titled Evidence, another collaboration with Glass. He has also directed the documentary Anima Mundi, funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature to promote its diversity program.

Reggio's most recent film is Visitors, which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.[5] Philip Glass returned as the film's composer and Jon Kane as the visual designer (having worked on Naqoyqatsi with Reggio in 2002).

In 2014, Reggio was recognized by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City with a full career retrospective titled Life with Technology: The Cinema of Godfrey Reggio.[6]

• Qatsi trilogy homepage
• Godfrey Reggio at IMDb
• Godfrey Reggio discography at Discogs
• Stock Exchange Of Visions: Visions of Godfrey Reggio
• Godfrey Reggio discusses his influences
• Godfrey Reggio's The Holy See
• The Brian Lehrer Show - A Visit with Godfrey Reggio, January 23, 2014
• Godfrey Reggio: 'My Che Guevara was Pope John XXIII' (Guardian, March 27, 2014)