Visitors

Screening with live accompaniment from sixty-six Members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, performing Philip Glass's score in the presence of the composer, and presented by Steven Soderbergh, Visitors will be a very special experience that we are delighted to launch into the world.

Famous for the Qatsi trilogy of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi, names taken from the Hopi language, director Godfrey Reggio has made another exquisite visual poem in Visitors, his first film in over a decade. If the Qatsi trilogy reflected on ideas of balance, transformation, and war, Visitors asks a very different question: Who and what is a visitor when we look around ourselves on this planet? Using this idea as a metaphysical departure for his visual reverie, Reggio takes us on a unique voyage into the mysteries and wonders of the universe.

Shot in dazzling black and white and projected in highest-resolution 4K, the film proves once again that Reggio is a visual genius, open to the magic of experience, masterly at editing his images into a work that calls upon its audiences to find their own meaning in the piece. More akin to music than narrative storytelling, Visitors creates moods and tones, allowing each of us to explore potential connections and associations. At times we enter an almost dreamlike state — notably with Reggio's meditation on human hands, as expressive as faces, interacting with technological tools (touchscreens, keyboards) that have been removed from the frame. The effect is mesmerizing, and Glass's score is a perfect complement.

This will be a rare opportunity to see the glories of Reggio's vision invigorated by an orchestra, immersing us even deeper into the world of a unique and distinctive artist.

PIERS HANDLING