Customer Reviews

Burning Man Festival (Special Edition)

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If you've heard about the Burning Man Festival, but have never been there, this is the movie for you! Friends of mine go to Burning Man every year, and they talk about it with incredible, wide-eyed enthusiasm. But I never appreciated what they were really so excited about until I saw this movie.

Burning Man is a truly one-of-a-kind event, kind of a Woodstock, Rainbow Gathering, and circus freak show, all rolled into one. You'll never believe what amaing art projects people haul out to the desert in the middle of nowhere. What's more, the people who go to Burning Man become part of a special community, and many find their lives are changed for the better.

Winston's documentary does a great job of showing Burning Man in all it's glory. We get interviews with the organizers and participants from many walks of life. Also, we follow the adventures of the four filmmakers as they try to join in the fun..

If you want to learn more about what truly creative people are up to in this country, you definitely need to see this movie!

The Burning Man Festival has long set the gold standard for countercultural revelry in a desert setting. Combining aspects of raves, rainbow gatherings, pagan celebrations, the festival transcends all these categories to have become an American cultural institution.

Thousands of people drive out to the Nevada desert every summer for a seven-day arts festival which culminates in the burning of an enormous human effigy - the Man. As if the beauty of the desert and the spectacle weren't enough, participants each create their own mini-spectacles, from huge peeing sculptures to rabbit motorcycles to entire night clubs. The result is an entire village, right out of Mad Max, full of improvised technology and nonstop entertainment.

Possibly the most impressive thing about Burning Man is how it has gone on for year after year, and never become commercialized. Aside from the admitedly steep $200 admission fee, nobody ever buys or sells anything, which keeps it from becoming a concert or swap meet, or worse, an MTV-sponsored party.

Joe Winston's documentary movies do a great job of capturing this madness, and shedding some light on the people who put this show on year after year, from the festival organizers on down.

The DVD is broken into two parts. The first movie is essentially a National Geographic travelogue, following a car full of newcomers to Burning Man. Together with them, we marvel at the parade of strange sights and colorful, often naked people.

The second movie finds the same group returning to the festival to set up their own attraction. I'm not sure whether watching these four guys struggle to set up their tent, couches and videotaping booth would encourage viewers to go to Burning Man, but anyone who's ever gone camping or put on a play can sympathize with their - often hilarious - travails.

In short, if you've ever been curious about Burning Man, or want to share the experience with others who've never been, this DVD is for you.

As someone who participates in the Burning Man Festival, I've become somewhat numb to the many different accounts of the event in the media. For the most part, none of them get it right. The news media is only interested in sensationalizing the event, noting the nudity, hinting at debauchery and drug use. Meanwhile, the "fan movies" made about it are nothing if not reverential in their attitude towards Burning Man, but they tend not to be very interesting otherwise.

The two documentaries on this DVD, by first-time filmmaker Joe Winston, are a huge improvement. The first of these two films captures perfectly the wonderment of arriving at Burning Man for the first time, not knowing what you are in for. The filmmakers are greeted by a fearsome-looking man with a machine gun (they don't do this anymore) who forces them to sing "This Land is Your Land."

The camera then sort of wanders through the event - which has grown much bigger since this movie was made, but retains the same spirit. We meet all sorts of strange and wonderful characters, some of whom do seem pretty wasted, but many of them have fascinating things to say about what it means to be at Burning Man.

That is the key to the festival. Burning Man is something different for everybody. There's no official line on what it is exactly, and no one ever tries to sell you anything. If only the rest of the world could be like that, we'd be in a much better place (a sentiment echoed by several festivalgoers in the documentary.)

The second movie, called "Burning Man: Just Add Couches," gets into more depth as to why the festival is so special to so many people. The filmmakers come back the following year, and set up their own Theme Camp. They participate in the event. A slogan you'll hear a lot if you go to Burning Man is "no spectactors."

Winston and his friends are clearly underprepared for putting together their Theme Camp project, a tent with couches and satellite TV they call "Couch Potato Camp." But their struggles are presented with such wonderful, self-effacing humor that it's impossible not to sympathize with them. Everyone who's been to Burning Man more than once knows what it's like to be out in the middle of nowhere and forgetten your #14 socket wrench.

In the end, this DVD should appeal to veteran Burners and people who've never heard of the event. The movies do not assume that viewers are familiar with Burning Man, but they don't condescend to longtime fans of the event. That's a difficult line to walk, and this movie does it well.

I live in a region of the country which doesn't feature much in the way of counterculture, but I'd heard of the Burning Man Festival from news reports and stories from my more adventurous friends. None of the things anybody said about it really made me want to camp in the desert for a week, but when I got a look at this DVD - which contains two fifty-minute movies - I changed my mind completely.

The Burning Man Festival which director Joe Winston portrays in his movies is every bit as weird and hedonistic as those brief clips you've seen on CNN suggest - and he even gets to show the (many) naked revels in their full glory. But what never makes it into the news accounts on television is a genuine subculture that seems to have arisen in the Nevada desert, where the annual Burning Man Festival takes place.

Naturally, a lot of young people from the San Francisco Bay area show up to Burning Man to stay high for days on end and frolick without supervision, and Winston captures them with a jaundiced eye. Whether or not these people running around in nothing but blue paint are "liberated" from the contraints of straight society, he leaves up to the viewer - but they are certainly fun to watch.

But, there is much more substance to Winston's documentary. As his fascinating interviews with the festival founders and more intelligent participants reveal, some serious work is being done amidst all the partying.

Many artists come to Burning Man to create work, and none of them seem to be high. Along with various performers, musicians, and rabble-rousers, they form a tight community in their ramshackle tent city. No one is ever seen selling T-shirts or anything else. Occasional wind storms, and other calamities (like a bunch of newbies getting lost on their way to the event) test the community with genuine hardship. I sensed a kind of frontier hardiness, which our country is supposed to have lost years ago.

In the second of the two movies, the filmmaker and his friends come back for a second helping of Burning Man, and let go of some of their voyeurism, roll up their shirt sleeves, and try to build an outrageous tented exhibition, called "Couch Potato Camp." They learn first hand how much easier it is to critique a movement than to join it, with often hilarious results. Fortunately, some of their projects are genuinely interesting - like speedy rolling couch-mobiles the zoom across the desert floor, and a forum for instant exhibitionism called "the Minute of Fame Booth."

In the end, these two little movies are documentary gems, clearly crafted with a lot of heart. I can't think of a better tribute to an odd American subculture crafted in the barren desert.

Fantastic Film!!! A thoughtful mixture: an intelligent documentary film about a visceral and visual arts festival. This documentary filmmaker doesn't pretend to be hip and never professes, "This is THE definitive Burning Man festival experience". Instead he allows you to take an honest journey to the event. First the documentary shows us art projects and colorful participants, like the gun toting disgruntled postal workers. Then the filmmakers themselves make their own art projects, some of which are very amusing. The filmmaker's enjoyment of Burning Man is evident throughout the documentary. Maybe that's why this IS the best documentary to date of the Burning Man Festival. Highly recommended for anyone planning to go, an experienced traveler or anyone who's even remotely curious. You won't be disappointed! The previous user, saviola417, is abusing Amazon's customer review system to advertise his photography services. I doubt he's even seen the DVD. Shame on him, and I hope the site administrators remove his review.

The primary strength of both the compelling films contained on this DVD is what it avoids, its strength to resist temptations common to other film of its like. Mr. Winston's doc manages to construct an organic flow of scenes while still resisting the urges to dribble out a stream of consciousness rendition of typicality of the Burning Man festival or offering a definition of what the festival "means". Neither approaches would have hit the point since, as this doc has shown me, the Burning Man seems more about a free spirited communal gathering than an opportunity for unique individual experience, more of a chance for open ended discovery than some sort of pre-conceived "defining experience".

Joe Winston spends most of the time following the various characters he encounters, whether they are clad in creative and decorative costume, driving their flamboyant cars, or just running around stark naked with well placed shiny tassels. People indulge in everything from making love in public to firing automatic weapons at patches of dirt, and somehow manage to make both equally innocuous and free-spirited. He also discusses current and past experiences of the festival with these characteristic festival-goers, as well as the history and ideas behind the festival with the founder, a Mr. Larry Harvey.

The second short film combines elements from the first with a more personal narrative that also takes as its task the portrayal of the filmmaker and his friends in their journey to make it to and live through another Burning Man Festival. Except this time they are determined to add to the diversity of creative venues. They construct a 1-Minute of Fame booth that couples 1 minute of recorded enclosed privacy with the open-ended impetus to create yourself, and the Couch Potato Camp, a home-base where anyone can relax on a couch, crack open a beer, and watch some TV. Both of these experiments produce notably interesting results, and end up schematizing well into conventions used for constructing the film itself.

Perhaps the most gaping flaw of both films is their brevity, which may leave the viewer not wondering what "goes on behind closed doors" or something similar, but that the full diversity of creative expressions for each respective festival is hardly exhausted by the film's coverage. Hopefully this compels you to attend a Burning Man festival (especially before its increasing popularity potentially blows it open into a different beast), but perhaps it just makes you want to stay far away from Black Rock City, Nevada.

I agree with other reviewers that this documentary movie does a great job of introducing the spectacle and philosophy of Burning Man to newcomers, while also being satisfying for those of us who regularly attend the festival.

The first movie on the DVD features some thoughtful interviews with participants and the festival founders, particularly Larry Harvey, who is also featured in other documentaries. Burning Man, from the beginning, embodies a philosophy of "No Spectactors," a radical departure from other gatherings.

Although none of the interviewees talk about it, Burning Man also gets a great deal of energy from the entrepreneurial one-upmanship of the Bay Area techies who wheel out their inventions to the Black Rock Desert each year.

The second movie on this DVD builds upon the first, showing the trials and travails (often humorous) of a group of first-timers who bring out a theme camp project. Clearly they're in over their heads, as they scramble to get furniture, shelter and art projects together in time for the big event. Anyone thinking about attending Burning Man should take a look at this before going.

Taken together, these two films do a great job of presenting the Burning Man Festival in all its glory. This DVD is well worth owning, for anyone who's a fan of the festival or just curious about it.

This is a film cheaply shot on video with a self-satisfied slacker take on Burning Man by a 1st time visitor. It captures some of the irreverence and irrelevance of the festival, which

I guess is what they thought was important, and absolutely none of the import (especially in these times) nor wonderment of it. The environmental philosophy of "Leave no trace", the rather radical gift economy, not to mention the unbridled creativity and visual awesomeness of the art (and land), are barely given a nod. I was very disappointed with this film.

These films are an exciting look inside a unique event. Interviews and documentary footage let the viewer experience the diverse, free-wheeling creativity and community that make the Burning Man festival so special. I especially appreciate the filmmaker's contribution: the minute of fame booth. Winston and his friends built from scratch a small booth where people did or said anything they wanted for one minute, and each evening held public a showing of the day's recordings. The addition of an interactive, quick-turnaround video project was a great angle on the collaborative nature of the festival.

The film captures the sublime as well as the mundane of the Burning Man festival: the ecstatic naked mud dancing, drumming, art cars, playing a giant instrument made of 20 pianos, the other-worldly dry, cracked earth. But sometimes it was just *hot*. The daily struggles to stay cool and caffeinated are also covered in all their humor and normalcy.

Interviews with fellow revelers showed a fascinating diversity of perspectives on the same festival. One woman describes Burning Man as a utopian seed for a better society; a naked man says the festival means, "nothing at all, it's just a good time." Someone else is hesitant to have faith in anything, including the festival, "because of the backlash of the way the left betrayed itself in the 60s." Highly recommended.

This dvd is really TWO documentaries in one. They're both by the same film makers, but they're really quite different in both their angle and their effectiveness.

The feature documentary, called simply "The Burning Man Festival," is a fairly superficial take on what the event looked like about 10 years ago (1995). It was... interesting, but it didn't quite grab me. I think the reason it seemed kinda flat was that the film makers had never been there before, and clearly didn't quite know what to expect. It's pretty hard to create an deep and piercing documentary about something when you have no idea what you're walking in to. Most of the "interviews" relied on the subjects to drive the piece, as if the flim makers were all but speachless as they panned around, capturing bits of burner lunacy. Ultimately, it came off feeling more like an extended news piece than a documentary.

The Man burns as expected, and the film makers return to the real world. But there's a problem: they just can't quite get Burning Man out of their heads! (hey, I know the feeling). So they vow to go back the following year, not to film a feature, but just to go, and have a good time. No documentary piece, just four guys on a roadtrip-pilgrimage. And, oh, maybe we'll take some home movies while we're there... maybe we'll even toss them onto the dvd as a "special feature," or something...

Well, in my opinion, this dvd "extra" is the real story. I found the "home movie" of their return trip to be a far superior documentary than their actual documentary. It is, incidentally, about as long as the feature piece, and called "Burning Man: Just Add Couches," a reference to their camp theme.

In this "accidental" documentary, we actually get to meet Joe, Anton, Dan, and Jengis (the original film makers) as they step through all phases of their jouney, from planning and packing, to travel, themecamp setup after sunset (damn, I hate it when that happens), playa strolling, gen x'ing, and (of course) man burning. They even burn part of their theme camp for good measure - that's the spirit guys!

Anyway, I'm not sure if they ever intended their home movies to be a "second documentary," but if it's just a "dvd extra," then it's about the best extra on any dvd I've ever owned. That alone makes this dvd well worth your dollar and your time.

In short, I could take or leave the feature documentary, but I LOVED their personal one. If I ever take a newbie to the desert, I think I'll show them that part of the dvd before we go. It leaves quite a lot of so-called "important" things out, but it does capture something about the experience that even the superb, "Beyond Black Rock" didn't manage to capture - what it's like to actually go there with a small group of your best pals.