Samsara
2011 · Film · documentary · 102 min
Directed by Ron Fricke
Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.
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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
It's the scale at which we do it at that is very disturbing. If you haven't, I recommend watching Samsara. Humans are pretty disturbing.
Yeah non verbal movies like this one, Man with a Movie Camera, Etudes sur Paris, Baraka, Samsara etc. are my favorites !
I can recommend Samsara [1] by Ron Fricke which is a collaboration of Barakat [2]
[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/ [2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt11564468/
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.
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.
Samsara is pretty great as well, mostly because of the impeccable cinematography and shelling out for 70mm film and lugging cameras and lenses which film in 70mm around the world.
Samsara is excellent. I watched in an indie cinema, and it really generated a mood without any form of judgement in what was being portrayed.
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.
Anything by Adam Curtis. Is he right? Is he wrong? What is going on? He makes some strong arguments at a system-level and of an interdisciplinary nature that really make you think. Despite how people like to write him off, he is likely not too far off the mark most of the time.
Samsara and its kin are engrossing, if not quite stressful. They show you how insane humanity is in rather raw form.
The BBC's Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and Life series are masterclasses in ecological storytelling.
Exit Through the Gift Shop is about as subversively hilarious as you can get.
I'll need to look it up later, but there's a really good documentary about the people who still hand-make Steinway pianos in New York.
I think there's a series called The Planets (?) that covered a lot of the various probes that were sent out.
There's some documentary about the various moon programs, covering Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc. It was a series. I can't remember the name or immediately find the one I am thinking of.
There's been a lot of fascinating animal documentaries I have lost track of.
Samsara [1] is not a typical documentary, but is well worth watching. It's visually stunning, and gives the viewer a great sense of the mechanisms of civilization.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(2011_film)
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
Samsara [1][2], from 2011, is a more recent take on the same theme, directed by Koyaanisqatsi’s cinematographer, Ron Fricke. Shot on 70mm film over the course of 5 years in 25 countries, it’s every bit as awe inspiring and chilling as the earlier film.
[1]: https://youtu.be/iQzpExpsezI
[2]: https://youtu.be/HCkEILshUyU
I highly recommend the movie Samsara for some amazing visuals of the scale of meat production.
I guess this boils down to what your mean by "inspiring"; let me give you some of my favorites by category:
> Movies about people doing stuff, usually investigating something - makes me want to get up and get stuff done
[1] Cold Case Hammarskjöld - IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9352780/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
[2] Tickled - Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOBXuCYB4jQ
[3] Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles - Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIWpJ5Jl4fE (full movie is on Youtube, Too)
[4] The Cove - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove_(film)
> Movies about ... the human condition, human life on earth? IDK, but if you watch the trailer, you get what I mean. WARNING: Might evoke the urge to travel
[1] Koyaanisqatsi - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi - Pruitt Igoe Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq_SpRBXRmE
[2] Samsara - Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkEILshUyU
[3] Anthropocene - Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikMlCxzO-94 (Check out his other movie "Watermark", too!)
> Movies about the work of particular people:
[1] Playing God - Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knK4lE3tZBM
If you haven’t seen, you should watch the documentary Samsara.
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.
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.
Samsara - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(2011_film) A non-narrative film, with stunning visuals. I feel it shows some of the best and worst of humanity, but in a non-pushy or judgemental way. It just leaves you to make your own conclusions.
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
You might find the film Samsara quite interesting. It's a timeline documentary showing how people live all over the world. Timelapses show the interconnectedness of things that happen too slowly for us to appreciate. Like star trails.
The film evokes a sense of how things are connected and all the suffering we create due to a desire to alleviate suffering.
Here is the list of my favorite documentaries: - The Cove - Food, Inc. - The Century Of The Self - Inside Job - Earthlings - Samsara - Earth - A Map For Saturday - The Story Of India
My favorites are:
Human: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdb4XGVTHkE
Earthlings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHZUuR1Udno
Samsara: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/
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.
This is really exciting. I came up with the same design last year and have been really wanting to make a rig like this. My gym had treadmills with screens, and you could select a virtual hike through places like Oregon and New Zealand. So I really want to capture some of these hikes with this rig, and replay them while walking or running on an Omni [1]. I'm really excited about the potential for VR to turn exercise into an enjoyable experience, instead of a chore.
And one day I would love to travel around the world with a team and film a documentary like Samsara. [2]
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1944625487/omni-move-naturally-in-your-favorite-game [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/
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
its amazing to me how, by simply by speeding up time, a whole new set of patterns and perspectives is readily apparent. we know they are there, but putting them on a more familiar scale makes them so much more real. i think those movies are so powerful because they zoom out in time, space, AND culture. love those films! good idea using their soundtracks to the hyperlapses- going to try it with samsara's now
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 don't know why, but I think that people that are fascinated by Kowloon and the like would really enjoy the movie Samsara. Really, I think everyone one earth would enjoy it.
I agree that industrialised farming is very upsetting. (I am a life-long vegetarian, by the way!) Have you watched the film Samsara? To quote Jason Kottke, some of the scenes give a "full visual meaning to the mass production of food."
But the analogy holds. On any sort of farm (even a vegetable farm) units of production are fungible commodities. And it turns out that this notion of fungibility is very important in post-virtualisation architectures.
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.