A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

[Maurice Cloche, 1947] moved me greatly. But I had no real background, and I felt that that was a unique preparation: I didn't have to unlearn anything to do what I was doing. To be quite candid, Scott, I felt a bit like a blind man having to work through the hands of other people: I didn't know camera equipment or technology, but what I had clear from the beginning was a pre-visualization of what I was concerned with. It was more than a concept; it was a feeling, and what I could feel, I could see.

I did a lot of traveling from the mid sixties through the early seventies to large cities in this country, Canada, and Mexico, and my observations led me to the structure of

Koyaanisqatsi

. My work in the barrio had ceased, but it had led me to media. With three other persons, I formed this media collective [Institute for Regional Education, where my interview with Reggio was recorded], which is now in its nineteenth year. While I didn't make films before

Koyaanisqatsi,

I did make a series of nonverbal public interest spots as part of a large media campaign, sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The campaign dealt with invasions of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior. Rather than use public service announcements, which had no visibility, we bought spots for the period of one month, in all media windowstelevision, newspapers, billboards, radio. For each of the television network affiliates, we had three spots in prime time per night, plus others during the talk shows. These ads were so visible and so popular that the viewing public was calling the station to see what time the next

ad

would be on. The technicians began to throw them in whenever they had an open spot, so we got a lot more than we paid for. We also had over thirty billboards in high traffic-density areas, and radio spots in "drive time." And we wrote a book, but instead of publishing it in the usual way, we inserted it into New Mexico's largest newspaper as a

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Billboard near Santa Fe, New Mexico (1974)part of Reggio's

publicity campaign against governmental invasion of privacy.

Sunday supplement. We had hot air balloons (that's a big thing in Albuquerque) with eyes draped on them.

MacDonald:

How did you fund this campaign?

Reggio:

We went through traditional Left foundation sources, people who were interested in social justice.

MacDonald:

What were the billboards like?

Reggio:

We had several different kinds, actually. We tried to use nonverbal communication. We had analyzedas best we could, albeit from a great distancethe nature of billboard advertising, and we found that really it was not competitive; it was all pretty much the same. So we designed billboards that were in diametric opposition to most billboards, which gave us a new kind of recognition. Usually, if you're passing a billboard, you have anywhere from seven to fourteen seconds to have some recognition of it. Because our billboards were so unusual and because they were on main arteries in high-traffic-density areas, they stuck out. In fact, we tried to put them next to other boards so their difference would have a real effect, a

conscious

effect. One of our billboards had a huge eye on it; that one was particularly effective. I'd sit behind the billboards with some of my colleagues and check out the drivers; we could

see

that we were having an impact on people.

MacDonald:

[Reggio shows me a photograph of one of the bill-

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boards.] There's a "seed" for

Koyaanisqatsi

in this image. Here's this incredible landscape and in the middle, a horrifying image that undercuts the landscape's beauty.

Reggio:

Definitely. That campaign was extraordinarily successful. We hadn't predicted what the outcome would be; we wanted to see what simultaneity could do. But the result was the elimination of Ritalin as a behavior-modifying drug in many school districts in the state. Knowing that politicians often do the right things for the wrong reasonsthey live by pollswe coordinated the campaign to happen when the state's Democratic and Republican conventions were held. While I don't believe in polls as a way to exercise democracy, I knew that politicians did, so

we

had a poll done by the University of New Mexico. The issue we were focusing on went from a fourteen percent recognition rate up to a sixty-seven percent. Politicians adopted almost all of the issues that were built into the campaign, and two of our congressional delegates in Washington cosponsored bills that eventually led to the elimination of psychosurgery in all federal institutions in the country.