Philip Glass and Lou Reed occupied Lincoln Center last week, after a performance of Glass' opera, "Satyagraha," at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. At the time, quality footage was scarce, but today Open Culture pointed out a new video that artfully gathers scenes from the evening.
The black-and-white short film, "Visible Shape," by Jean Thevenin, is clearly meant to stir populist sentiment for the movement, and it's quite effective. Glass' music -- "Protest" from "Satyagraha" (as performed by the New York City Opera Orchestra) -- plays in the background, as the protesters being their chant: "When I saw you, I saw love." The camera focuses in on faces, lit up by the words Reed and Glass share with the intimate crowd.
"The police are our army," Reed says quietly, as the crowd echoes him. "I want to be friends with them."
Glass takes a more poetic tack, reciting the closing lines of "Satyagraha." Glass' opera, which focuses on Gandhi's non-violent protest in South Africa, has a timely message for the movement, one he laid out in a blog for The Huffington Post. These closing lines are where "Visible Shape" gets its name from:
"When righteousness withers away, and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil, and setting virtue on her seat again."
Watch "Visible Shape":
Visible Shape (Philip Glass & Lou Reed occupying Lincoln Center) from jaune! on Vimeo.