February 18th 2010. 7pm
Campus Theater, Denton, TX

Thin Line Film Festival just announced that Dust & Illusions was selected for their 2010 sessions. This is a good news. Thin Line happens in Denton, TX, just north of Dallas. I will try to set up a video link to do the Q&A as I will be away from the country during that period of time.

The film will have almost had a full year theater tour in the US. A very successful one, with almost every show sold out. The film is entertaining and at the same time is done to make one think about what the Burning Man phenomenon really represents today.

Dust & Illusions is also different from a lot of other film, in the fact that I’m not looking for distribution, yet the film is working really well. I hope it will continue.

Enjoy the film in Texas!

Invite your friends to the Event and check who’s coming!

More info and TICKETS here!

November 5th 7:30pm
LICHTMESS KINO, Gauss Strasse 25 • Tel. +4940.3907603, www.lichtmess-kino.de
Event. Invite 200+ people from Boston on facebook and get 1 free ticket… contact me first!!

RADAR Hamburg has just announced Dust & Illusions has been selected for the 2009 session (November 2-7). This is the 4th selection for the film and counting! Hamburg is located in the Northern tip of Germany (2 hours northwest of Berlin). I won’t be able to attend as I will be at the screenings of the film in New-York, Philly, Baltimore & Boston, b/w Nov 1st and Nov 6th.

Full details and schedule on Radar Hamburg’s website: http://www.radarhamburg.com/en/index.html

This will be the 2nd showing in Europe after the sold out screening in London last August 6th. There will be more, whether through film festival or special screenings. At first I had tried to work on a screening in Paris, France, but the Burning Man Regional there told me that the film would turn people off Burning Man. I was really surprised by such a short-sighted reaction.

The film is the only documentary that explores the history of the event, rediscovering the roots of the event within the underground movements of the later 1970s in San Francisco. It looks at the journey the festival has taken from the beach on the Pacific Ocean to the desert of the Black Rock in Nevada. It brings out the reasons why it has become so popular and of course looks at where it’s headed. The film brings important questions that must be asked to ensure the experiment goes on and keeps its promise of building community through creativity. The French burners are missing out on this deep look at the event, and an essential overview of what the political games, and leadership can lead us into in the long run. But I believe there are more enlightened people in Paris that will understand why it’s important to be critical and take a deep look at where the communities we care for are going so we keep caring for them.

At most of the screenings, people have come to me and told me how the film has inspired them to go home and make art. An Oakland steel worker who came to the screening of the film in Berkeley last June, has now joined the Flaming Lotus Girls, and went to his 1st Burning Man last week along with the group. He said the film really inspired him to put his skills into Art, and added that the balanced criticism was important in making the film relevant without alienating people by being only preachy of the “all-positive-benefits” anyone get from Burning Man. He didn’t even wear a pink furry costume covered in blinkies… surprisingly.

See you in Hamburg!!

Dust & Illusions has been selected by the Idaho International Film Festival that happens yearly in Boise, ID. This is the 3rd film festival selection, and other film festivals are now showing interests. About 10 other festivals have either invited me to send them a screener of the film or/and have waived the usual fee that most American film festival requires to pay to cover some of their administration cost.

Bruce Fletcher the director of the festival wrote this little commentary on the film:

DUST & ILLUSIONS, Olivier Bonin’s fascinating, controversial documentary takes a privileged glimpse at the history and future of Burning Man, one of the most important (if not the most important) counter-cultural movements of the last two decades.

Bonin provides a thoughtful and critical overview of the event’s transformation from a humble guerilla art project on San Francisco’s Baker Beach to a major corporation that funds artists, fosters a year-round virtual community, and builds Black Rock City in the middle of nowhere on a yearly basis.

If you’ve never been to the playa, DUST & ILLUSIONS will give you an excellent idea of exactly what you’re missing, and veteran burners will see the direction the event is headed (for better or for worse). Don’t miss it. – Bruce Fletcher

You can find all the schedule details of the festival here: http://www.idahofilmfestival.com/program.htm. Dust & Illusions is programmed to play on the following dates:

• September 26th 2009, 2:30pm at The Flicks
• September 27th 2009, 9:15pm at Edwards Boise Downtown Stadium 9

I’m pleased to announce that the film was selected for the SF Docfest for the October 16-29 2009 session of the festival. It will give the film proper publicity in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Burning Man was born. I hope that this push will help get a discussion going about Burning Man in the Bay Area, and where it’s headed.

Read a review by Cinesource about the film here.

SF Indie uses the Roxie to play its selection of movies. This will be the 8th annual documentary festival they organize.

Schedule:

• SHOW #1: October 17th at 9:15pm
  tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/producerevent/83720?prod_id=11208
• SHOW #2: October 22nd at 7pm
  tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/producerevent/83718?prod_id=11208

Invite your friends to this event on Facebook.

The Pärnu International Documentary Film Festival has selected the film. That’s the 2nd film festival. Another good news. I hope they will keep coming.

Despite some of the criticism I received from people in the Burning Man organization, saying that the film might turn people away from the festival, it will actually very much do exactly the opposite. This film is an honest account of certain aspects of the festival, and an account of its history that will mesmerize people who have never heard of Burning Man, and certainly attract people outside of the US, which will be a good thing. Remember the belgians in 2006, when they brought the Waffle, I mean Uchronia, we were all so impressed. Well it’s time for people from different horizons to impress and inspire us again about what Burning Man is all about!

Many people who have never been to the festival came to tell me after each screening that they really want to go… not only to party, but to participate in creative collaboration, which is what the film tries to present as the essence of Burning Man.

Pärnu Docfest is happening on July 5-26 2009.
http://www.chaplin.ee/filmfestival/index.htm

Please continue supporting the film, this will help with finishing the last bits of Voice Over, and Sound Mix so needed. Click on Support the film button on the right hand side.

Monday July 6th 2009, 7pm
THE MUSEUM OF NEW ART (10 Esplanaadi Str.)
Pärnu, Estonia

This space is for your comments on the film if you have seen it, don’t hesitate to write what you’ve liked and not liked about the film. Constructive criticism is highly recommended. And when you’re done just send those comments to your friends to let them know about the film, this film highly depends on the word of mouth.
Thank you!

It took slightly more time to complete the film than we thought. Lack of money, lack of time, lack of resources. The music also finally came together in a grand way, produced and directed by master Samuel Fajner. We’re really happy that the film has its original score.

There are still a few details, like the sound mix, which we just can’t do here, and we need help for this. The sooner the better. Please let me know if you can help doing the sound mix.

Check out the trailers and teasers.

Olivier Bonin & Arthur Guibert figuring out what needs to be filmed.

We were not completely satisfied with footage that we had of the Black Rock without Burning Man, so we went back twice in July to film, and actually to do some little re-enactment, just to give the stories from Larry Harvey and Adrian Roberts a bit more punch.

The old guard still comes around apparently.

Finally some rest. No one around.

After 2 successful screening this month, Steve Jones wrote the following review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: “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.

I have finished my own editing of the film, bringing the story together. For the next 2 months, Arthur Guibert will join him to bring the editing to the next level. Guibert has 10 years of experience in documentary film editing. A new perspective and a fresh eye is very needed at this point of the post-production.