Hacker Cinema
Baraka
1992 · Film · documentary · 97 min
Directed by Ron Fricke
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
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50 comments on Hacker News
I have both Blu-ray and DVDs and I've found its the content that determines which is good enough. Kids in care not one bit about image quality. Obviously: people still like retro games, too. But then other movies, like anything by Villenueve or Nolan, or Baraka, really want to be on 4K Blu-ray. But kids movies on DVD are perfectly fine, and sitcoms like Community. (Personally I'd pay extra to NOT see Pierce in 4k).
I recently purchased the Firefly Blu-ray and it was an interesting case because it's image quality isn't that much better than the DVD (but definitely better) however it's sound quality was astonishingly better than the DVD. I imagine this has a lot to do with the source material, how it was mastered, etc. I still stream, but I like that I have a core collection that will never disappear without warning, or be edited behind my back (which happens all the time, without notice, especially on YouTube and on Amazon Prime).
Nice shots, would fit well in the Baraka (or Samara) movie.
1. Bill Cunningham New York
2. General Magic(2018)
3. The Armstrong Lie
4. Icarus (2017 film)
5. Man on Wire
6. Baraka & Samsara
7. BBC Planet Earth
8. Finding Vivian Maier
They're not silent films in the classic cinematic history sense, but they're completely free of dialogue and fascinating to watch as dives into the richness of our human world: "Baraka" and The Qatsi Trilogy of three films (with superb music by Philip Glass to boot.
For Baraka at least, Roger Ebert summed it up nicely: "If man sends another Voyager to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be Baraka."
Yeah non verbal movies like this one, Man with a Movie Camera, Etudes sur Paris, Baraka, Samsara etc. are my favorites !
Baraka movie is a colorful vivid beautiful impactful movie without any narrative.
Babies movie (1 hour documentary) is about 4 newborns in different locations of the world, again colored, beautiful shots and without any narrative.
Mentioned in another comment, but if you like Baraka, seek out the film Man With a Motion Picture Camera (or Man With a Movie Camera), it's the progenitor of both Baraka and the qatsi trilogy. There's a version with a score performed by Cinematic Orchestra that is just amazing!
Underrated by whom? :)
Movie: Baraka. It's connected to the much better-known Koyaanisqatsi and is a similar concept but IME this one was more compelling in subject matter and videography.
Music: The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown. It's a small-scale musical exploring a strained relationship through one character going forwards in time and the other backwards and I just think it's lovely.
Baraka is outstanding and the stronger of the two films imo.
Some people think of the qatsi trilogy, Baraka, Samsara, Chronos, Visitors, etc. as documentaries without words, or just pretty pictures and music.
I think of them as audiovisual essays. They're not just a delight for the senses. Each of these films says things. They cut unexpected subjects together in comparisons that speak about the human condition. They use music queues to force new interpretations of familiar settings. The qatsi trilogy uses those hopi sayings to set your mind on rails and then the visuals and music propel you on a roller coaster of emotion, but Fricke's films dispense with the rails and simply let you draw your own meaning. That meaning changes a little every time you watch the films.
These are films that invite you to create your own interpretation. You are invited to watch them with an active mind, always looking for new details, correlations, and how they fit together. This is totally unlike a documentary whose narrator tells you what to think. Here you are not being taught, but invited to teach yourself.
Give these films a chance if you've never watched them. They are uniquely rewarding.
Surely, we still live in a life out of balance. But something about how digital much of human life and industry is now makes it seemingly difficult to create a modern successor to Koyaanisqatsi. I suppose you could just have a panning shot across massive server farms and maybe some footage evoking the sheer amount of carbon and water requires for these operations, but not sure it translates to film in the same powerful way as other footage in films like Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka, and the most recent film along these lines that I have seen, Anthropocene (2018).
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.
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
While this movie is great and everything the author says rings true, I must be honest and say for me the movie that floored me more was Baraka. It’s just…astonishing, mesmorising, dumbfounding? I can’t put into words now this movie makes me feel
If you like this then I can’t recommend Baraka highly enough, by the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)
No narration at all, just amazing visuals and music/sounds. Review by Ebert:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-baraka-1992
Or Baraka and Samsara if you'd prefer films of the same tradition, minus the somewhat over-the-top Philip Glass scores (which I enjoy more on their own than as part of the films).
Also one of my favorite films. In a similar vein, Baraka and Samsara are also great, but the score for Koyaanisqatsi is simply beautiful.
The ending sequence still gives me chills. Lots of scenes do, actually.
Ron Fricke's other works, namely Baraka, are also worth a watch.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767/
The Koyaanisqatsi cinematographer went on to become a director himself, and made the movie “Baraka” in the same style. IMHO, it’s even better.
I love documentaries, and these are my favourites. All very worth a watch.
- The Crash Reel
- McConkey
- Buck
- Apollo 11
- Carts of Darkness
- The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
- Samsara
- Baraka
- Brooklyn Castle
- Spellbound
- Drew: The Man Behind the Poster
- Crumb
- The Jinx
- The Art of Flight
- King of Kong
- Indie Game: The Movie
- Capturing the Friedmans
- OJ: Made in America
- The Barkley Marathons
- The Seven Five
- Murderball
- Unbranded
- Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee
- Big River Man
- Hoop Dreams
- Word Wars
- Free Solo
- Long Shot
- Meru
- Being Elmo
- All This Mayhem
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi
- The Cove
- Project Nim
- Alone in the Wilderness
- Behind the Curve
- The Dawn Wall
- Grizzly Man
- 13th
- Winnebago Man
- Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler
- Get Me Roger Stone
- Icarus
- 13th
- Koyaanisqatsi
- The Thin Blue Line
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Oklahoma City
- Virunga
- The Staircase
- Evil Genius
- Undefeated
- Betting on zero
Dogma, Baraka, Space odyssey 2001 (and other Cubric's movies)
Here is a few: Dogma, Baraka, Space odyssey 2001 (and other Cubric's movies)
Ron Fricke, the man behind Baraka and Samsara, was the director of photography (and writer, editor) for Koyaanisqatsi. I would keep in mind how novel Koyaanisqatsi was for its time, and that Baraka and Samsara are mere evolutions on a revolutionary film.
I much preferred Samsara (2011) over Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka.
I show people Samsara to demonstrate how a movie can have an incredibly powerful message without saying a single word.
The movies "Baraka" and "Samsara", both by the same makers, come to mind.
Baraka is a really good film. Samsara, made later, is also good, but not quite at the level of its predecessor. Both available on Amazon.
This what my takeaway from watching Baraka again recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)
While the film doesn't focus on any particular person, it covers society at large. It portrays the build-up of a modern, global society and eventually shows shots of ancient Egypt ruins. We are no different. One too all of this will be gone.
These monkeys are in the first scene of one of my favourite movies.
Baraka (1992) -- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767
Check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbdFW6N782w
The film Baraka has great shots of moving fog in mountains: https://youtu.be/r6BJkLWivzY?t=1029
They are still my favorite nature shots. I'm remembering them when I remind myself that the planet has way more great stuff than what I see daily around me.
I watched Samsara while on LSD it was a very beautiful experience. Some of the scenes really hurt me deeply. I couldn't help but cry.
Also check out Ron Fricke's Baraka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)). It's just as beautiful in my opinion.
Baraka. No narrative, no traditional story, just stunning images from around the world. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0103767
Jesus camp was scary.
I don't know if these fall under documentary category, but I enjoyed SAMSARA and BARAKA, because of their music and stunning cinematography
https://www.amazon.com/Samsara-Ron-Fricke/dp/B00AYQNOFI/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AO9NDY2
The last time I went to warped tour (2004 i think?) Anti-Flag played. Great show - being part of 5000 people chanting lyrics is very much like a religious experience. Such things are actually used to induce religious/trance states among many niche and ethnic religions (see Kecak/Sanghyang, which you may know from the movie Baraka).
An excellent film.
The cinematographer on Koyaanisqatsi (I forget his name) also directed two films called Baraka and more recently Samsara, which are in the same vein if you're into that kind of thing.
Baraka - both format and content was one of the first movies that really made me "think" & realize how many different experiences of being human can exist.
I know this is off topic, but one of the fist / only books that ever really changed my view on the world around me was "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness" - I have never seen things quiet the same way after reading this.
There is art that seeks to please or entertain, and there is art that seeks to say something. For example, even if movies like "Baraka" and "Samsara" already have been made, they still need to be made again, every few decades. And even in cases where the audience doesn't need some things said many times in different ways; each artist still needs that act of actively saying it. I'm not an artist, but what creativity I do have in my life, it is for me. For example, I sometimes write lyrics and I rap them shittily, and I am pretty much not concerned what anyone but me thinks of them. They're my little bubble in which I can clean my own soul, and who sees it or cares is not my concern. And while I don't consider that "making art", I know much worse things, that have nothing to say at all, are called art with a straight face. So technically, it's art. And I don't do it to get laid, I did it, as I said, to relieve pressure and come to terms with the world around me. I am not saying this is the sole motivation for art, but at least I don't have to second guess artists with a message on their motivation, because I know it's at least possible to not give a fuck, because I am doing it right now.. if society was so great I could seek its approval with a straight face, I would have no reason to write songs. So I'm not asking when I make "art", I'm telling, and I don't worry wether what I do is good enough for people, if anything I'd worry wether people are good enough for it. And I'm not making great things, you know, and still I take them seriously enough to feel that way. How much more so for "real" artists. It is said Bach wrote for God first and last; or was that just PR? Yeah he did it for a living, but his motivation was not to impress people. Are such people the exception of the rule, or is the rule just nonsense?
Though I agree, don't encourage art, make it illegal. It will not stop people from being artists, but it would curb a lot of mediocrity :P
this is pretty but man is it bad at recommending similar movies in the documentary genre. it might as well be giving completely random results:
http://www.movieo.me/14002-baraka
Amazing. Meditating upon time-lapsed video backed by drone music is something I've been addicted to ever since I first saw Baraka. If you like this and you're not aware of Baraka - watch it now, along with its sequel Samsara and the similar Koyaanisqatsi films.
And obviously, the Baraka soundtrack is a magical fit for this stream!
I remember seeing this at a repertory theatre about 15 years ago and having my mind blown. Yes Baraka and Samsara are both beautiful but IMO they lack the cohesiveness of Koyaanisqatsi, especially considering the interplay of music + images.
I echo the others who say that watching this with ads is a terrible idea. It completely kills the flow of it. I can't think of a worse movie to have interrupted by ads.
If you can, watch it any other way.
Baraka and Samsara beat this movie hands down. I know this is sacrilegious, but that Philip Glass soundtrack is awful.
One of my favorite films when I was younger. I discovered the music composers Phillip Glass and subsequently Steve Reich through the films. Many documentaries and media productions play on the audio visual styles Reggio popularized in the film. It's interesting how often I detect sqatsi-ism in modern film (1). Just a couple days ago while watching "Home" I felt it's presence (2).
Koyaanisqatsi was the first of a trilogy of films:
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirH8PADDgQ
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powaqqatsi Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNVTmWRcUbY
Naqoyqatsi: Life as War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqoyqatsi Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PxT3MtTedw
The films creator, Godfrey Reggio has recently created a new work:
Visitors: 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitors_(2013_film) Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ZwYJI55Rs
The original cinematographer for Koyaanisqatsi, Ron Fricke, went on to produce similar styles of films:
Samsara: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(2011_film) Baraka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film) Chronos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronos_(film)
Phillip Glass: Music Composer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Glass Sample of Phillip Glass's music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkof3nPK--Y
Steve Reich: Music Composer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Reich Sample of Steve Reich's music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU23LqQ6LY4
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(1) Sqatsi-ism: Made up word to describe the type of audio visual style created and popularized in the original film, which can now be seen throughout media.
(2) Home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU. Interesting fact, the narrator of the film sounds almost identical to the woman in Phillip Glass's song "Einstein on the Beach Play 5", which was created back when he did the score for Koyaanisqatsi. Play 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmX_GgozpQs.
Note: If you enjoy documentaries TrueFilms a great resources to discover new titles you may not have seen before: http://truefilms.com. In fact, many of the titles listed above are on this list.
If you liked Koyaanisqatsi, you'll love Baraka [1] and Samsara [2], both also Ron Fricke.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(2011_film)
You might want to check out Ron Fricke's movies, they are a splendid window into human's life and their relation to this planet.
Specifically Baraka which is to my taste his best, but also Samsara and Chronos.
Ron Fricke was involved in the making of this film. I whole heartedly recommend his two films Baraka and the more recent Samsara. The latter is the most stunning film I have ever seen and I recommend that everyone should see it. It is absolutely amazing! Baraka is fantastic too.
Back in 1985, Ron Fricke, the same director of Baraka (1992) and Samsara (2011), created the most impressive time-lapse film ever made till then. It was called Chronos and it's available online [1]. It's very interesting to watch how the moving pictures match the soundtrack to capture the essence of Time [2].
[1] http://youtu.be/1K9N9flhOx4
[2] http://youtu.be/1K9N9flhOx4?t=25m24s
If you like this then you should check out Baraka, this film has a few shots that were inspired by it. The follow up - Samsara - is also excellent.
edit: a great first step would be to watch the meditative film: Baraka!!
To be honest, I would not recommend starting with a book. It'd be hard to go into meditation that way. I don't meditate daily, so what do I know? But I do know that the few times I've gotten to that place where I said "oh wow I love meditating!" were guided meditations led by someone who's good at guiding.
Basically for beginners, it's nice to close your eyes and let a guide take you through a series of thoughts/visualizations/concepts/sounds that end in a breathing- or mantra-focused meditation.
The goal in meditation is the ceasing of thought, which is probably why thinking too much and reading thus may not help. Tho it depends.
Search youtube for some good guided meditation and approaches and see if any work for you.
I often return to the best guided approaches in my own mind when I do try to meditate...
final edit: If you are by any chance near Berkeley, I strongly recommend checking out (any week is good) the Meditation, Mysticism, and the Mind decal (grad-student-led course) at UC Berkeley. They bring in a wonderful speaker each week from a different world tradition and mix lecture with guided meditation.
"Couldn't the image just 'look sharper' without the viewer being able to pinpoint the extra pixels?"
Yes. The movie Baraka was shot in 8K. When they released the remastered DVD it looks much better for having been shot in 8K first, even though the end product was only at DVD resolution. It's not just a matter of how many pixels you can see, the very fact that there are more pixels in the raw footage means the colors will be more vibrant and accurate is the final product. If nothing else the existence of 4K TVs will cause directors to shoot in 4K, which will make the end product better regardless of how many pixels you can actually see.
Also, if you haven't seen Baraka I'd highly recommend it. It's widely considered the best DVD of all time in terms of picture quality, and it's also the one movie that Roger Ebert says we should show aliens to explain the human race.
Darwin's Nightmare, if you want a reality check.
Baraka, if you want inspiration.
The Class (Entre les murs), not a documentary, but a hyper-real film about youth and the possibilities of education.
Seven Up!, as to what may come.
1. 2046 by Wong Kar Wai (Cantonese film) 2. In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai (Cantonese film) 3. Baraka by Ron Fricke (No story, no language, just photography)