Burning Man film revives key conflict
A new film about Burning Man – Dust & Illusions, which has its first public screening tomorrow night at CELLspace in a benefit for the fire arts collective Flaming Lotus Girls – revives questions about whether the rapidly growing event has missed an opportunity to transform itself from the best party on the planet into an important and enduring sociopolitical movement.
San Francisco filmmaker Olivier Bonin has been shooting footage for the film (which is still in rough form and awaiting final editing and a soundtrack) for more than four years. Much of his time has been spent with the Flaming Lotus Girls, who we were each embedded with when I did a nine-month immersion journalism project with the group in 2005.
Bonin has collected some amazing archival footage from the event’s early years and he scored insightful interviews with significant originators such as John Law and Jerry James, offering viewers a sense of what a collaborative effort the creation of the modern event was. Founder Larry Harvey comes off as sort of the last man standing and the often uncomfortable interview footage with Harvey certainly doesn’t help dispel the accusations that there’s a leadership vacuum at the heart of an event that has come to consume so much financial, emotional, and creative capital in San Francisco.
I saw Dust & Illusions two weeks ago during a screening at the Mission-based film project Rough Cuts, in which an invited panel of guests gave Bonin feedback in a structured forum. The group included some of the film’s stars, including Chicken John and Jim Mason, who led the Borg2 revolt that serves as the main conflict in the film.
Everybody liked the film, and everyone agreed that Harvey didn’t do himself or the organization any favors, chain-smoking through his interviews and sometimes coming off as petulant, obtuse, or impervious. But the film is far from a hit piece, celebrating the beloved and bemoaned event while musing about its potential for more.
“To me, Burning Man is still a unique and important thing, but isn’t it going to dry out if they don’t keep reinventing themselves from a leadership standpoint?” Bonin told me this week.
As the guy who wrote the series of articles that first exposed Bonin to the central conflict in his film, I have some insights into the subject matter. And I know that Harvey has been slowly nudging the event toward great sociopolitical relevance, mindful that any overt declarations of its meaning and direction could cause many of its participants to flee.
Ultimately, I think this is best film about Burning Man that’s ever been made, and the questions it raises are even more relevant today than they were when I and others first started raising them almost four years ago. Check it out.
Dust and Illusions, 8 p.m. at CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, $10-$20 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit the Flaming Lotus Girls.
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