When I first experienced … this movie at the Gothenburg Film Festival 1994, I was truly amazed. Never before – or since – have I had such an over-all, explain-it-all feeling after a show. Ron Fricke has made a documentary about the World today for a day, starting at dawn with monkeys in hot springs in Japan, and the morning rituals of various religions. This is followed by the awakening of the human race, both in the big cities and in the country side. Brilliantly edited, the film follows every aspect of human daily life combined with the general changes of the planet itself and all the ecological systems upon it. The over-all glue of the story are the various religious rituals. The only time giver, except for the turning of the sun, are the praying times and times of worship … around the globe. The Gaia idea (that the Earth is a whole being, a unit, a living organism) is detectable in the film, both in the way all the different cultures shown are found to be very similar to one another, and in the way the speeded-up people at side walks and zebra crossings look very much like the stream of blood in the veins of an organism.
Source: jcnteach from Gothenburg, Sweden
(Photograph: bigfoto.com)