Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey Reggio was born on March 29, 1940 in New Orleans. It was in the southwest of Louisiana where Reggio was raised until he was about fourteen years of age. Once he turned fourteen, he joined a Roman Catholic pontifical order known as the Christian brothers. For fourteen years from that point, he spent his childhood training to be a monk. That meant, that he dedicated fourteen years of his life to prayer and peace. He had to fast, pray, and be silent for the majority of his childhood. Eventually, Reggio abandoned his path to becoming a monk. Even though Reggio had abandoned his path to becoming a monk, the values and wisdom he acquired never left him.

In the sixties, Reggio went on to teach grade school, secondary school, and college in New Mexico. Reggio’s service to the community did not stop at teaching. In 1963, he co-founded Young Citizens for Action, which aided juvenile street gangs. In addition to the Young Citizens for Action, Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, which provided medical care to over 12,000 people in the community, and the Institute for Regional Education in Santa Fe, a foundation that focused on media development, the arts, community organization, and research. His desire to help children and as well, the community, were transparent throughout his life.

In 1983, Godfrey Reggio made his debut into the film world by directing and producing his first film, Koyaanisqatsi, which was the first film of his Qatsi trilogy. The three films of the Qatsi trilogy are, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Nagoyqatsi. Following the second film, Powaqqatsi, Reggio directed a short film called Anima Mundi in 1992. Reggio helped develop a new school of exploration and production in the arts, technology, and mass media in 1993. The school was called Abrica-Future, Presente, and opened in May 1995. For the rest of year of 1995, Reggio served as the director of the school. Reggio finished the Qatsi trilogy in 2002, when he completed the final film, Naqoyqatsi. At the present moment, Godfrey Reggio is working on a new film that has a narrative structure, which he has never done before.

From researching Godfrey’s films and his life, it can be inferred that he is very artistically and environmentally inclined. With that in mind, Reggio invented his own film style. He puts emphasis on giving the audience images of emotional impact and thought inducing relevance. His style is unique in that there is no script. His entire trilogy is non-verbal, and is a collage of images of real life. This style forces the audience to observe the images and develop their own meaning of the film. It allows for more interaction of the film with the audience’s artistic state of mind. Due to the fact that there is no film narrative in his films, Reggio uses slow motion, time-lapse, and superposition to create a dramatizing effect. He made the subjects in his films seem hyperactive by slowing the frame speed extremely slower than the standard 24 frames per second. This gives the illusion that the subjects are moving faster than the surroundings, or, vice versa. The editing of the films plays an important role in grabbing the audience’s attention. It does this because, as mentioned before, there is no character dialogue. The film’s he creates depicts the rapid evolution of the modern world over the last few decades. His style is so unique that it can be classified into its own genre.