I saw it at the Toronto screening; it was a really special week for Burners in the city because the Flaming Lotus Girls had their Angel of the Apocalypse installation all week at a free festival – right in front of city hall! It was great to see all kinds of people getting a little of the BM magic, and to see the playa-inspired flames shoot up in the frosty, January night.

WELL DONE!!! i really really enjoyed the screening! To begin, the World Cafe was a good palce to host it, and definitely did justice to the presentation (and i think everyone liked the food)! But i really, really enjoyed your presentation of the history of Burning Man. I’;ve been researching Burning Man for most of the year, but your film certainly went more in depth into areas I hadn’t realized had been so influential (such as the Cacophony Society- I’d known it was involved, but there seemed to be more of a merger that happened, which i wasn’t aware of). Also, I liked the focus on some of the more fundemental contributors and why they did/didn’t stay with Burning Man over it’s physical and ideological transformation. I recently just got done reading AfterBurn: reflections on Burning Man, by Lee Gilmore and Mark Van Proyen. I appreciated your film a lot because it was very much like the book, except i thought yours was more focused and in depth, and therefore much more educational. And interesting! I couldn’t believe that you got all that film (or even that it existed!). I feel like no one really films anything, anymore, so that was a really cool window to be able to look back through. Oh! I also like that the film, kinda, was a subtle roast of Larry Harvey, but that it didn’t just criticize- it just exposed that this man, kinda of eccentric and spontatneous and flawed, didn;t always do it right, but was the one who kept it going, for better or for worse, for 20 years, “longer than the hippie, beatnik, and a few other movements combined”. In short, i thought this was a really good insight for people not only in the culture, but ones just getting started. Thanks and great job!

The film gives a lot of insight into Burning Man’s history and founding members as well as the filmmaker’s own perspective, but it manages to do so without becoming prescriptive about what Burning Man means, how it should be run, or what it should become in the future. It effectively connects questions about Burning Man to larger questions about the roles of creativity and community in human society at large.

Rather than attempting to answer these questions directly, the film ultimately turns them right back on its audience, which I thought was a fitting ending — very in line with Burning Man’s ideal of us all being participants rather than observers.

Thanks for making the film, very well done.

And you captured the playa in all it’s moods. Beautiful to see.

I loved the comment from one of your interviewees who said the magic of Larry Harvey is that he “keeps doing it.”

I think the films stands fairly solidly as a historical documentary. However, I think as a reflection of the current Burning Man experience, it is skewed. You really presented it like two halves of a coin, drugs and raves (trailer trash) on one hand and art (intellectuals) on the other. While your material on drugs, raves and art was well chosen and accurate (I LOVE the Flaming Lotus Girls), there were many other aspects that were not covered at all.

For example, the interactions of “community” at Burning Man did not come through, except for the communities of particular art groups.
Portraying the varied human interactions at Burning Man would definitely be a challenging thing, legally and artistically. But finding a way to show it would be ideal.

So, a good documentary provokes discussion, and here it is. The message of comparing the roots of burningman with it’s fruits, is a great one. As a BM participant, I sometimes feel that it’s getting easier to Armchair it at BM. Stretching your own boundaries requires intent, energy and inspiration.

Thanks for the inspiration.

by this i mean the natural way of things to grow, and with that comes unavoidable change. i can completely relate to the spiritual ties you felt when the festival was small, and quite extraordinarily revolutionary, dancing around the fire in a sacred celebration and release. even from the first year i attended the festival to this year, i have most definitely seen a change in the trend of people that attend, from more dedicated non conformists to many a bunch of wild party animals completely letting themselves go in the desert. but the spirituality is still in full bloom.

last year the temple burn was probably the most moving experience of my life, atleast 10 thousand people still around, and hardly a word spoken. community was in its essence here, because we all let ourselves go in a collective consciousness to the montrous flames. before this happened the past year i would return from burning man and say i wasnt going back, for the exact reason of your criticism in this movie- the change in motives! from spirituality to partying, is the general one i experienced. but this temply burn proved to me that the heart beat of burning man is still beating powerfully.

i appreciate your documentary greatly, it explored many things of burning mans origin which i was not aware of (suicide club etc). this helped me to see a perspective such as yours, experiencing the immense change and evolutionary aspects of the festival from point A (at its origin), to point B at its current state.

Thanks a million! we really need collectivness such as Burning Man for the future. It is people like you that are making sure its heart beat stays strong.