Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
January 23, 2014

Filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass made experimental documentary history back in the 1980s with their Qatsi Trilogy, a series of films exploring modern man and his environment – both a warning in the case of the frenetic Koyaanisqatsi and a celebration in the form of the uplifting Powaqqatsi. Over 20 years later the two have come together again to bring us Visitors – an altogether bleaker and more reflective film – presented with live accompaniment last night by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and conducted by musical director of the Philip Glass Ensemble (since 1976!), Michael Riesman.

Bringing the classical music program at this year’s Sydney Festival to a close in meditative mood rather than with a bang, Visitors shows us a series of intensely slow-moving images, mostly of human faces, forcing us to speculate on our place in the world, both as spectator (or visitor) and as subject (or visited). As we gaze on these black and white images of people, several of which may or not be ‘alive’, we reflect on each one’s passivity or lack of it. Are we watching or being watched? Is the emotion we are reading...