Pruit Igoe from Koyaanisqatsi (used in GTA IV trailer)

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This is a segment from the cult movie "Koyaanisqatsi" featuring the Philip Glass composed track "Pruit Igoe".

The first trailer of GTA IV features an edited version of the music, and a visualisation that is strangely familiar after watching the above mentioned movie.

A quote from Wikipedia: "In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way."

Seems fitting enough for both this piece of film and the game it (partially) inspired.

Victoria lived in the Pruitt-Igoe development and she posted her story in the comments. Sadly, it got marked as spam. Here it is:


I remember waking up each morning looking at the cinder block walls of the room my sister and I shared.They were painted blue and white, a checkered pattern. Mamma let us do it.

I remember winters, playing in the hallway on the 10th floor.We played catch a girl kiss a girl,kickball,dodgeball,and skated.
Shirley and I smeared do do we found in the middleway on that mean old lady's doorknob. In retrospect I see we were wrong,She lived on the 9th floor and we made a lot of noise over her head. The hallway floors were concrete and we skated often, all of us did. We must have really disturbed her.......Iapologize. You're probably no longer with us but, I apologize.

The days of summer were especially memorable. The concrete was so hot our bare feet burned as we ran to the playground to play in the sprinkler system the firefightrs set up. The goal was to not only endure the pain from the heat, we also learned how to walk on glass with few cuts on them. When we were really looking for fun we rode on top of the elevator or slid down it's cables.

I saw my first murdered person when I was 10 or 11. I actually saw her. She had been decaying at the bottom of the elavator shaft of the third or fourth building on Ofallon, we lived in the second one. I remember seeing people carrying a stretcher, covered with a white sheet. Just as they were passing me the wind blew the sheet. I saw her....... I had already known of a lot of us dieing but the vision of what was under that sheet still haunts me......Only the strong survived.

At the age of sixteen my mother saved my life, she signed me up for Job Corps. I was sent to Astoria , Oregon.She saved my life by not allowing me to become a more active participant in the madness surrounding us.

September of 1970 I went home to visit. The day I arrived, I heard a voice yelling,........She's under the breazeway.......I went across the street to see what was up. I made my way to the front of the crowd, there were a lot of us there.......

Jeanette was there, she had a hole in her forehead........ I looked in the hole.............
She had two children, the babygirl was about three or four,her babyboy was eight months...I wonder how they are.

I remember the dances on and around the pyramid. Dancing In The Street was often played over the p.a. system. We all danced. Everybody danced, some of us better than others, Jeanette was one of the best. My cousin Johnny was ,too. He taught me how to bop, and play spades. I'm goooood.

Most of us learned how to dance on skates. I remember St. Nicks. Nate was a floorboy. He had the funniest laugh I have ever heard. I miss him, still. The guys didn't want to be called punks so they never wore white precisions .They were for girls....... Those were the days.

I tend to focus on the positive aspects of Puitt/Igoe. There were maaaany positives.We built relationships, made memories, shared lives, we shared love. There was a strange sense of unity , as a whole outsiders were not allowed to come in and upset the.......balance............We were village of thousands.......Only the strong survive.


- Victoria (Vowoyele) Monday, October 29, 2007

Channel: Film & Animation
Uploaded: April 1, 2007 at 4:33 am
Author: themanautomatic

Length: 00:08:09
Rating: 4.72
Views: 66974

Tags: GTA IV Koyaanisqatsi Philip Glass Pruit Igoe

Video Comments:
trujib (November 16, 2008 at 12:04 pm)
this complex was said when it was built to be one of the great masterpieces of Modern Architecture in America. It was a complex of public housing which was trying to create social harmony following the ideals of modernism. It failed horribly and as you guys have said lots of people died and violence was rampant. Its demolision was very significant as it marked the Death of Modernism and all its ideals of veneration of the machine and function over form.
RaphaelNYC (November 11, 2008 at 7:21 pm)
And both PI and WTC were destroyed.
casa990 (October 29, 2008 at 8:40 pm)
I imagine a war torn town in eastern europe after the bosnian war. Sadness and suffering, i have not watched Koyanisquatsi yet but this song has got a great meaning in my heart ive got to watch this film.
vowoyele (October 4, 2008 at 6:36 am)
I checked with family and found out the little girl was in fact, only one or two.
retrospizikes (October 2, 2008 at 3:48 am)
well 4 me this video reminded of Call of duty 4 modern warfare mission "all ghiled up". It's in the abondened town, buildings look kinda same.
zenpho (September 23, 2008 at 1:48 am)
Everytime I've watched Koyanisquatsi I have always wondered what this building was - I assumed it was selected for filming because it would be (and is!) spectacular to see such a large building demolished. Now I know the history behind it, it makes so much more sense in the "out of balance" context. I wonder if there are many other segments of the film that have historical significance as well as intrinsic beauty?
emokiller907 (September 11, 2008 at 5:05 pm)
this song is a tune!

i heard of from gta 4
gaastra12 (September 9, 2008 at 6:47 pm)
how come there whare so many homicides and that it was so criminally? how could such a large project fail so big and how come there whare sooo many criminals? i mean, if i looked at this, and read some stories about it i would think it was like in japan or something. but US? i cant believe it :O. thanks for telling me what this is :)
vowoyele (September 15, 2008 at 7:30 am)
Please , Don't think everyone there was a criminal, The majority of us were just poor people who were glad to have a roof over our heads. A large number of those who were criminals did not even live there. They came there to do their dirt because they knew it was hard for the police to actually control the complex. The biggesst problem came as a result of the fact that the structures were so complex that at times it served well as a fortress of sorts.
uv777 (October 1, 2008 at 9:20 pm)
Well said!