"Koyaanisqatsi" brought me here. While making his masterpiece, Godfrey Reggio turned his eyes to this obscure short film to compose some of his jaw-dropping pictures and the reference is quite obvious: most of the New York sequences shot in time-lapse with people and vehicles going on full speed, day and night. But while Reggio has a deeper and more spiritual take on the captured images to form a whole designed to each viewer find their own personal answers, director Hilary Harris makes in "Organism" a comparison between the human interior and the outside world, as if they have things in common.
We have the overwhelming spectacle of the 1970's New York City, of monumental architectures, skyscrapers all over the place, unstopping traffic of cars, vehicles and people, the image of a super developed place. Despite the everyday's confusion and the uncontrolled chaos, there's order and system in this continuous puzzle that doesn't have a way to be solved. The city that never sleeps. In the background of those images we have two voices describing parts of the human body and how this system works with brain and heart functions, or how it reacts when the body is sick. The obvious comparison comes when see cars rushing through traffic and the first thought that comes to mind is of the blood going through our veins, or the message the brain sends to any part of the body to command an action or a reaction. The city is seen as an organism that support life, but a system that still can function without any or other part, unlike the human body. In both systems, the traffic must always be going somewhere, otherwise it's just death.
Mr. Harris is right on the money with such juxtaposition, it's quite interesting to follow this idea. Unfortunately, it didn't help me much in some parts due to the poor sound quality which obscured some of the words said by the narrators and no captions were provided for such. Maybe in another subsequent view I'll try to gather everything that was said. For the most part I could understand, the comparison was well-developed (there's some brief microscopical images of the human body as well). Not to mention, the techniques employed to the piece are used to the max, beautifully done. 9/10
We have the overwhelming spectacle of the 1970's New York City, of monumental architectures, skyscrapers all over the place, unstopping traffic of cars, vehicles and people, the image of a super developed place. Despite the everyday's confusion and the uncontrolled chaos, there's order and system in this continuous puzzle that doesn't have a way to be solved. The city that never sleeps. In the background of those images we have two voices describing parts of the human body and how this system works with brain and heart functions, or how it reacts when the body is sick. The obvious comparison comes when see cars rushing through traffic and the first thought that comes to mind is of the blood going through our veins, or the message the brain sends to any part of the body to command an action or a reaction. The city is seen as an organism that support life, but a system that still can function without any or other part, unlike the human body. In both systems, the traffic must always be going somewhere, otherwise it's just death.
Mr. Harris is right on the money with such juxtaposition, it's quite interesting to follow this idea. Unfortunately, it didn't help me much in some parts due to the poor sound quality which obscured some of the words said by the narrators and no captions were provided for such. Maybe in another subsequent view I'll try to gather everything that was said. For the most part I could understand, the comparison was well-developed (there's some brief microscopical images of the human body as well). Not to mention, the techniques employed to the piece are used to the max, beautifully done. 9/10
