Past Programs
Film and Soundtracks - 2008
Life Out of Balance
18/04/2008
Earth Day, celebrated on 22 April each year, is a secular event with spiritual overtones. It marks the founding of the modern environmental movement in 1970, but it also acts as a substitute religious festival drawing on the spiritual yearnings of many environmentalists. This hybrid spirituality was perfectly captured in the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi, a cavalcade of visions set to the music of composer Philip Glass. According to the film's director, Godfrey Reggio, 'Koyaanisqatsi' is a Hopi Indian word meaning 'life out of balance' and the film links the earth's degradation to our spiritual disenchantment. Reggio himself spent 14 years with the Catholic Christian Brothers order training to be a monk, while Philip Glass is a Jewish convert to Tibetan Buddhism.
We'll hear the final movement called 'Prophecies' from Glass's soundtrack, and also hear an Australian duo, Jethro and Prem Aliyah Williams who have released four albums under the name Sacred Earth. Their music is deeply meditative, drawing on Hindu mantras, their practice of yoga and meditation, and their own earth consciousness.
