The Blue Planet turns 25

A year before Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi hit theaters, filmmaker Franco Piavoli released The Blue Planet (Il Pianeta Azzurro). Both films are nonnarrative. Both are tone poems with a strong focus on great cinematography. An important difference is that The Blue Planet consists entirely of images and sounds from the natural world and the Italian countryside. One critic said of it, “if Thoreau had been handed a camera, he might have made a film very much like Blue Planet.”

If you missed The Blue Planet’s one-week run here in Boulder ten years ago, you can catch it on the big screen — if you’re willing to fly to New York this weekend. (The connection is Bruno Bossio, a former Boulderite, student of Fellini, and film promoter, who is helping put together the 25th anniversary celebration.)

The festivities began earlier this week, with Godfrey Reggio (director of the films in the Qatsi trilogy) introducing Piavoli and The Blue Planet to the audience at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Tuesday. The Anthology Film Archives is running a retrospective this weekend of all four of Piavoli’s films.