During the opening minutes of Koyaanisqatsi– pronounced “ko-yan-ni-SKAT-zie” – the screen is ablaze with what appears to be volcanic eruptions. Fire belches forth from the earth, flames fill the sky and rubble slowly drifts to the ground, all while a doleful chorus chants the film’s title.

Right away, we know we’re in trouble.

Later, the cameras turn to long, graceful travelogue shots of arid landscapes, inviting us to contemplate the wonders of deserts and mountainous terrain while clouds scuttle across the open skies. With disrupting abruptness, however, slo-mo shots of industrial development intrude on our visions of paradise, bluntly underscoring how this natural splendor is being exploited and vandalized by – uh-oh! — Man.

Then we know we’re really in trouble.

Miraculously enough, however, once monk-turned-filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and ace cinematographer Ron Fricke move away from Monument Valley and trudge off to The Big City, Koyaanisqatsi picks up and takes off.

Often cited as a primary influence on everything from TV commercials to IMAX spectacles to MTV fantasias, this trendsetting blend of hypnotic music and time-lapse cinematography was released in 1983 as an urgent warning against the despoiling of the wilds by the warp-speed forces of so-called civilization. (The title is a word from the Hopi Indian language that translates variously as “crazy life,” “life out of balance” or “a state of life that calls for another way of living.”)

The movie – which Cinema Arts Festival Houston will present Friday at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston with director Reggio in attendance – importunes us to contrast the majestic panoramas of nature with the chrome-and-steel pandemonium of man, and find the latter wanting.

Trouble is, the pandemonium is more fun. And, truth to tell, a lot more visually and emotionally stunning. Reggio’s nobly-intentioned extravaganza, which the Library of Congress has included in its National Film Registry, indisputably is an exhilaratingly wild ride. But perhaps that ride doesn’t end at the destination that its creator intended.

To make their anti-technology tract, Reggio and his crew used then-innovative camera, sound and editing equipment to create what, at the time, seemed the most dazzling sound-and-light show this side of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The filmmakers doubtless were sincere in their desire that we all return to a simpler, slower, less techno-centric lifestyle. But Koyaanisqatsi inevitably undercuts its own back-to-basics message by coming off as a cinematic trip that enhances nature with an overdose of high-tech movie magic.

Goodness gracious, what wondrous things we see. An enormous full moon dashes across a night sky, then coyly darts behind a brightly-lit skyscraper. Wave after wave of commuters rush down elevators and onto subway platforms, their movements accelerated and stylized with speed-shifting cinematography. Thousands of cars zip along labyrinthine highway systems, their streaking headlights and taillights resembling red and yellow laser blasts.

We see all of this and much, much more, in a collage choreographed to the relentlessly surging, Dolby-amplified score by Philip Glass, whose atonal music is the only sound we hear (except, of course, for the chorus) throughout the entire film.

I vividly recall that, back when I first encountered Koyaanisqatsi in an H-Town movie theater nearly 30 years ago, there was a point during its kaleidoscopic frenzy when I simply tossed aside my notebook, and surrendered to the film with a sense of bug-eyed, slack-jawed astonishment. Indeed, such was the adrenaline rush I felt that I actually threw up my hands, like a kid on a rollercoaster, and shouted: “Wheeeeee!”

Mind you, I did this during a private screening, at which I was the sole member of the audience, so I risked little in the way of public humiliation. (See: Sometimes it pays to be a film critic.) But I suspect that, even if had been surrounded by scads of other moviegoers, my response would have been no less uninhibited.

Once I regained something approximating objectivity after that press screening – at the Greenway 3, if I remember correctly — I wrote for The Houston Post:

Almost three decades later, I wouldn’t change a word of that evaluation. On the other hand, I’m willing to give the final word to Godfrey Reggio himself, who has pursued his obsessions in two other indie-produced, Philip Glass-scored movies — Powwaqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002).

During a Q&A session at the 2002 New Orleans Film Festival, Reggio fielded the inevitable question about the apparent conflict between message and mechanics. Specifically, he was asked why and how he continues to make such rabidly anti-technology movies with such cutting-edge, high-end technology.

“I’m an artist,” he patiently explained, “so I have to use the tools that are available to me. I mean, I would like to simply think the films and have them appear, but…”

(Koyaanisqatsi will be presented by Cinema Arts Festival Houston at 7:30 pm Friday at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Director Godfrey Reggio will on hand to introduce the film.)