Pip Pip!

Yesterday was the 80th birthday of the BBC time signal pips.

Listening to - Powaqqatsi - Philip Glass

Now koyaanisqatsi was wonderful. I have seen it several times before, once when it was shown very late by Channel 4 and I could not sleep afterwards. The long section called The Grid is just breath taking. It consists of static shots of cities sped up and gradually sped up further until near the end of the sequence it is difficult to work out what you are seeing. Now there was a passage early in 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' where the narrator hits a policeman because he asks him questions without giving him time to reply; the information just builds up in his head. This struck me as similar to what I experienced when watching The Grid section.

I was driving in to work the other day when two massive building cranes loomed out of the mist. They were angled so that the jibs were facing in exact opposite directions like a massive honour guard or those two giant statues at the end of the first Lord of the Rings film. I though that it would have made a great time-lapse sequence to have them move slowly throughout the sunrise but of course the film-maker didn't script anything for Koyaanisqatsi. The film looks stunning; some of the cityscapes are so beautiful and together with the music they create real 'tingle factor' and yet all the time it is in the back of your head that you are supposed to be horrified by what humans are doing to the planet and that you are part of the problem. My memory of this film has always been that it was a gritty low-fi thing meant to make a point rather than be beautiful but watching it yesterday I was struck by how perfect it actually was.