[Kowloon Walled City | image source]
The generous stills on this web site include a few images of the physical conglomeration that made up the walled city, illustrating its proximity to the now-demolished-just-like-the-walled-city Kai Tak Airport.
[Kowloon Walled City | image source]
Kowloon Walled City was demolished in 1993 for a number of reasons, so only images such as these are what survive for those, like me, fascinated by the place but never to visit it.
[Kowloon Walled City | image source]
Glancing at some of the other stills on the film's web site, Baraka clearly resembles another non-narrative film devoted to presenting imagery of the world's populations and their respective environments: Koyaanisqatsi.
[Brazil slums | image source]
The first film of Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy, released ten years before Baraka, looks at "the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment," according to the filmmakers. Baraka, likewise, "show some of the best, and worse, parts of nature and human life."
[Sao Paulo, Brazil | image source]
Having seen the earlier film and not (yet) the latter, it sounds like the big difference between the two films that share much in common, including the use of time-lapse photography and a minimalist soundtrack, is their outlook: the former pessimistic but the latter a bit more positive.
[Varanasi, India | image source]
One way this assumption can be deduced is the derivative of each title...
[Bhaktapur, Nepal | image source]
Koyaanisqatsi: Hopi Indian term meaning "life out of balance."
[Auschwitz, Poland | image source]
Baraka: Sufi words meaning blessing, essence of life.
[Ta Prohm Temple, Cambodia | image source]
Regardless of Baraka's relatively positive tone, images of the "bad" accompany those of the "good," like a corridor of a concentration camp in Aushwitz shot the same as a ruined temple in Angkor, Cambodia.
[Mecca | image source]
All images above from Baraka.
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