A frequently asked question on the Burning Man official website inquires 'We would like to visit Burning Man, but can only spend part of the day there. Are you selling 1-day or 2- day passes at the gate?'.  The answer, in part, is 'This is not a spectator event'.  Part of the philosophy of the annual 'temporary community', Black Rock, in the Nevada desert is that in order to be a part of it you have to really be a part of it by spending all or part of a week with 30,000 others at the festival.  For those of us who have not yet attended, 'Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock', screening as part of AFI Fest 2005 at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinema on November 4 & 5, provides the best opportunity yet to see what life is really like on the Black Rock 'Playa'.  Producer Mike Wilson's film allows the audience to see for the first time the inner workings of the festival, the true nature and feelings of its many participants, and life in Black Rock City in a way that previous documentary attempts and network news hype pieces have failed to do.

First time filmmaker Mike Wilson began the project as a tribute to his best friend and business partner Doug Myres, who suddenly passed away the year after the two had attended their first Burning Man in 2000.  After nine months of persistence, Wilson convinced the usually reluctant founder and staff of Burning Man to allow him to film the behind the scenes of the event by agreeing that the Burning Man people would receive final cut on the film.  With that agreement in place Wilson's Gone Off Deep Productions, including Director/Editor Damon Brown, D.P. Rob Van Alkemade and Story Supervisor William Haskins, began an eighteen month shoot that started with Burning Man 2002 and includes interview footage up to six months after the 2003 edition.  The film follows the timeline of the shoot.

The film focuses on the soulful nature of the people of Burning Man rather than its freaky side and nudity as past films and news stories have done.  Burning Man 2002 is shown to the audience in a series of quick cut and loud sequences at the beginning of the film that are a bit disorienting.  Then the film moves on to documenting the year leading up to Burning Man 2003, including the planning meetings, volunteer gathering and huge infrastructure that is necessary to build a city in the desert.  Interviews with the various personalities that are required for this undertaking provide a bit of history of the event and shows just how much work goes in to pulling it off each year.

In seeking the center of the Burning Man movement the film profiles three of the many artists who spend much of their year planning and building works to be exhibited on the 'Playa' for the week of the event.  The design and planning of a seven story tall temple made of image collage covered pillars and minuets takes a large part of artist David Best's year away from Nevada.  Best, an architect, his family, volunteers, trucks and a crane are all required to make this sanctuary in the desert.  Like the Burning Man itself, the temple is immolated at the end of the week so that a new one can be designed and built over the following year, but not before Best walks the circle of people around the temple and assures each and every onlooker with his mantra for life 'It's not your fault'.  Rafael Santiago of New York City labors to make a new version of a sculpture for Burning Man and then deals with the trials of transporting it cross country, repairing the damage from the trip and handling the bureaucracy of this community without many rules except for where and when you can install artwork.  Finally, Bob Marzewski triumphs over physics and even a horrible fire in his home to finish his globe that people can crawl into or spin around via a giant lever and platform.

Most notable of the interviews done for the film are those with Burning Man founder Larry Harvey.  The filmmakers seem to have made him comfortable enough to engage in an introspective long description of how his many career failures in life led him to self discovery and to his great success with Burning Man.  The self-described 'employee that you shouldn't hire' espouses many poignant philosophical observations about societal pressure to fit in and personal growth through doing what one wants and likes to do for the sake of doing it not to achieve goals.

The film covers the 2003 Burning Man from the building of the city, the central cafe of which is said to be the size of SBC Park Baseball Stadium, to the burning of David Best's temple the day after the Man is burned, to the volunteers walking the grid after the event picking up every cigarette butt and bottle cap.  Shooting on MiniDV Director Brown and D.P. VanAlkemade do a wonderful job of capturing images of Black Rock City, its citizens and artwork.  Nighttime shots of the neon and fire spread throughout the camp are colorful and captivating.  They use aerial footage to give perspective to the temporary city spread over a five mile circumference of the desert and great driving footage of the open land before Burning Man as contrasting transitions with the shots of a community of 30,000 people.  Finally, the sea of people slowly dancing around the burning remnants of 'The Man' drives home the instinctive tribal nature of Burning Man.

'Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock' will give any viewer a fantastic inside look at a grand experimental community built by the spirit of its founder, workers and volunteers to benefit themselves and all those who visit.  The first time filmmakers 18 month effort effectively captures the essence of Burning Man with interviews and spectacular pictures that seem to truly convey the ideals that the event is based upon.

 
More information on the film can be found at www.burningmanmovie.com and AFI Fest 2005 at www.afifest.com/afifest.

Copyright © 2003 - 2009 Splash Magazines Worldwide. All rights reserved.

Top of Page