On April 22nd, it will be over a year that Dust & Illusions will have toured North America. Most of the screenings have sold out, and the audiences are thrilled with the film.

Event. Invite 200+ people from Spokane on facebook and get 1 FREE TICKET… If not, maybe you have radio/newspaper contact or other resources, then please contact me!

Synopsys | Trailers | Other Screenings | Reviews

• Please buy a ticket that you can afford so people with lower income can buy cheaper tickets.
• “+ support the film” tickets feed the donation funds on the right hand side of the page.
• Reserved seats are the 1/3 front central seats. Best in the house.
• The film starts at 7:00pm sharp. Film is 90 minutes long. Be on time

Previous screening sold out 1 month in advance, so we recommend to get tickets now.

After a year of sold out screenings through the states, and a success at San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, here is the 3rd of a series of screenings in San Francisco & Bay Area. DIRECTOR will be in attendance for Q&A. And drinks.

Event. Invite 200+ people from SF Bay Area on facebook and get 1 FREE TICKET… If not, maybe you have radio/newspaper contact or other resources, then please contact me!

Synopsys | Trailers | Other Screenings | Reviews

• Please buy a ticket that you can afford so people with lower income can buy cheaper tickets.
• “+ support the film” tickets feed the donation funds on the right hand side of the page.
• Reserved seats are the 1/3 front central seats. Best in the house.
• The film starts at 7:30pm sharp. Film is 90 minutes long. Be on time

Picture by Dave X

OPERATION RESTORE DEFENESTRATION
Fundraiser and Solo Show by Brian Goggin
Opening Reception: Friday March 5th, 2010 6-10 pm 1:AM Gallery 1000 Howard Street

How many times have you driven by Howard & 6th Streets and looked up at the seemingly animated furniture, tables, chairs, lamps, grandfather clocks, couches, their bodies bent like centipedes, grasping the ledges, hanging off the roof and climbing out of windows like escapees? Have you wondered who put them there? In 1997 with an NEA grant and over 100 volunteers it was Brian Goggin who created this site-specific sculptural mural called Defenestration. While expected to be up for only a year, those tables, chairs, lamps, clocks, and couches have weathered the elements for nearly thirteen and have fallen into unfortunate disrepair.

Operation Restore Defenestration needs $75,000 to repair the artwork making it again safe and beautiful during the day, and vibrant and illuminated at night. Brian Goggin has already begun working with a structural engineer, volunteers and assistants to return “Defenestration” to its original magnificence.  But they need your help. The restoration is a fiscally sponsored project of The Black Rock Arts Foundation where donors can make tax-deductible gifts or sponsor the restoration of an individual piece of furniture at www.defenestration.org. Your donation of $500 or more will be honored with your name on a commemorative plaque mounted on the Defenestration building and you will be awarded a certificate of sponsorship.

Operation Restore Defenestration will bring back a welcomed visual to the neighborhood where locals and visitors flock to this playful destination. With your support you can help put the magic back into this beacon that brightens its surroundings and is so deeply loved by the community.

I hope you will join me in revitalizing this unique San Francisco landmark. Come meet the artist, see the sculptural mural and learn more about the restoration project at the opening reception on March 5th, 6-10 pm at 1:AM Gallery, 1000 Howard Street, San Francisco. There will be a variety of prints, sculptural chairs and “Defenestration” memorabilia for sale. The show runs through April 2nd. For more information and to donate online please visit  www.defenestration.org.
Thank you in advance for your support!

After 1 year of sold out screenings through the states, London, Hamburg and a show in Amsterdam on feb 25th sold out 2 months in advance!! The film is coming for a 2nd time in Amsterdam. DIRECTOR will be doing Q&A after the film.

Invite your friends to the Event. Support the film, invite people, and the film will remain outside of the traditional corporate model of making/distributing films. THX!

Synopsys | Trailers | Other Screenings | Reviews

• Please buy a ticket that you can afford so people with lower income can buy cheaper tickets.
• “+ support the film” tickets feed the donation funds on the right hand side of the page.
• The film starts at 8pm sharp. Film is 90 minutes long. Be on time

UPDATE: New SCREENING in San Francisco, Apr 21st 2010. Click here.

After 1 year of sold out screenings through the states, and a success at San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, here is the 3rd of a series of screenings in San Francisco & Bay Area. DIRECTOR will be in attendance for Q&A. And drinks.

Event.

Synopsys | Trailers | Other Screenings | Reviews

• The film starts at 7:30pm sharp. Film is 90 minutes long. Be on time
• Show is SOLD OUT since March 2nd. A new show is set for Apr 29th. Click here.

Here is what Michael Mikel wrote back in 2007 about the event:

An annual San Francisco tradition occurs at this time of the year, when the last stand of sidewalk fir trees is logged by the Friends of the Rootless Forest and then piled up on the beach for some very rapid composting. Saturday, January 6th. Meet at the Carousel Diner, 2750 Sloat Blvd at 7:00 PM. (Look for the giant Doghead in the middle of the street.) We’ll hang out for half an hour and then head west when the coast is clear. Bring a christmas tree and libations. No glass containers on the beach, you assume the risk, no one is in charge, your mileage may very. And remember; “When fire is outlawed, only outlaws will have fire.”

During the spring equinox of 2007, the Friends of the Rootless Forest will plant an equal number of trees to offset the carbon footprint of climate changing gases that are released into the air by this year’s Post-Yule Pyre. After playing with fire on the beach, we will take up the torch for a much greater cause. This is a Leave No Trace event. All of the ashes from our ecstatic celebration will be removed within 24 hours

Flickr Pool Slideshow of many Post-Yule Pyres available here.
More info on Santacon: http://blog.burningman.com/?p=6196
Link to Michael Mikel: http://twitter.com/danger_ranger

© Cyril Gitton. (Photo by)

A WAY TOO SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

David T. Warren (aka: Flamo LaGrande, R. J. Mololopozy) lived a strange and unique life.  After a tempestuous upbringing in the home of a prominent building contractor in Hayward, Dave left town with a traveling carnival.  Here he learned the art of eating fire as well as various sideshow skills including magic.  Later, he would apply his showmanship to selling Kirby vacuums and became tops of his team of salesmen.  Of other door-to-door items he peddled, perhaps the strangest were Venus’ Fly Traps — carnivorous plants that Dave touted as “organic insecticide.”

At a crucial junction in his life involving separation from his wife and children, he moved to San Francisco after the 1972 demolishing of the seaside amusement park “Playland At the Beach.”   Upset by the destruction of this park, Dave formed his one man Playland Research Center and initiated a series of Playland parties in the rubble of the park.   PRC was dedicated to collecting and archiving photos, film, personal interviews of and about the classic attraction out at Ocean Beach that served as a magnet for young and old alike. His mottos “Do It” and “Have Fun” were painted on a large wall at Ocean Beach to spread his message to passersby.

In 1978 David,  along with Gary Warne, Adrienne Burk and Nancy Prussia had a wild experience where they clung desperately to a heavy barricade chain atop the seawall under the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point as thirty foot waves crashed down on top of them. Later, in the early hours of January 3 over hot chocolate the four friends decided to start a club where they would encourage members to “live each day as though it were their last” by creating events and experiences that would challenge their deep personal fears, expand their knowledge and understanding of their world and those in it AND be hella fun.  This group became the San Francisco Suicide Club.

Also in 1978, along with Chris DeMonterrey and Steve Mobia, David restored and operated the Giant Camera below the Cliff House at Ocean Beach. Dave considered the camera to be one of the last vestiges of Playland and so it fit into his grand scheme.  This spectral attraction, one of fewer that half a dozen surviving in the world, was often attributed to Leonardo DaVinci and became a popular curiosity at scenic tourist spots during the Victorian era.  Though both the GGNRA and the Cliff House restaurant wanted this bright yellow building demolished, David worked overtime, cooking up publicity for this interesting but strange place and it was his passion (and thousands of signatures gathered at the camera) that years later finally won for the camera the “official” designation as a national historic building (which is why it still exists, even after the remodeling of the Cliff House).

Though David, and the “Friends of Ocean Beach” fought a hard grassroots battle to stop condominiums from crowding out the public on the old Playland property, the developers got much of what they wanted.  However their plans to build right up to the rocky edge of Sutro Heights Park was halted.  The parcel of land where Dave painted his festive signs is even today free of buildings and this is due to the struggle that Dave and the “Friends of Ocean Beach” put up to stop the developers.

The Suicide Club morphed into the Cacophony Society in the mid 80’s, which in turn birthed the Burning Man Festival as a desert event in 1990. That year, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Dave was the first human to ignite the 40’ wooden figure, inaugurating nearly 20 years now of desert shenanigans.

David had a rough time of it the last decade or so. For someone who inspired people and brought humor and adventure into their lives, he could never seem to shake the many demons that plagued him and eventually brought him to his end. Many concerned friends searched out and/or helped to find David several times from the mid-90’s til 2008.) He would lapse in and out of binge drinking and usually end up on the street , sometimes making it into a group home or hospital/rehab clinic. Over the years some of us visited him at a graphics artist retirement home in Oakland, a group home in Oakland, a nursing home in Hayward as well as a couple of different camping spots in Castro Valley, Golden Gate Park and Hayward. His son put him up in an apartment in Sonora for a few months around 2002 but Dave’s weakness for drink always managed to sabotage any gains he might have made.  He lived in Golden Gate Park for various periods through out the early 00’s and with Richard Tuck in El Cerritto for a while as he worked on the upcoming museum. We always eventually found him.

About a year ago, we became concerned when Richard was notified that David’s storage space in Santa Rosa was in arrears and about to default. Over the years, whether David was living indoors or not, whether his rent checks cleared or not, he ALWAYS paid the rent on his storage. He placed great importance on the stuff he had stored though much of it (boxes of empty vodka bottles, hundreds of pounds of Encyclopedia Britanicas, stacks of wood, etc.) might strike the casual observer as being of little or no value. Regardless, David lived homeless many years in order to insure his storage fees were paid. So when we learned that after 10 years he missed the rent we were pretty worried that maybe this time we wouldn’t find him again. And, sadly, we didn’t.

It all seems pretty blue but one time a couple of years ago when I had tracked him to a disheveled camping spot behind a huge boulder in Carlos Bee Park in Hayward which was his home for several years . David explained why he was there. It was mid morning on a glorious day, sunlight was streaming through the thick canopy of pine trees across the streambed just below his camping spot. The park was beautiful and seemed much as it must have back before the 49ers invaded the West. I was pretty upset that David was living in such straits – sleeping in a soggy pile of blankets and cardboard. Being morning time, he was sober and, for the time being had regained more than a bit of his old eloquence and insight. He could see I was bummed and had started berating him somewhat for not staying sober and retaining his quite comfortable room in the nursing home on B Street. He gave me that intense gaze of his, eyebrows raised in mock sardonic judgement. “Just look at this” he said gesturing grandly with the old showman’s panache’. “ This park, these trees and rocks and that stream… it’s all mine. I sleep where I want. I walk where I want. NO ONE tells me what to do, where to go, what I can’t say, WHO I SHOULD BE! You should be so lucky, kid!”

That is how David T. Warren should be remembered.

Written by John Law & Steve Mobia

February 18th 2010. 7pm

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!

After 9 months of sold out screenings through the states, and a success at San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, the film is presented by the Philadelphia Film Society for a unique screening.

Event.

Synopsys | Trailers | Other Screenings | Reviews

• PRE-SALES HAVE ENDED
• PFS Members must bring a proof of membership along with their ID
• The film starts at 7:00pm sharp. Film is 90 minutes long. Be on time

After 9 months of sold out screenings through the states, London, Hamburg, the film is showing in Amsterdam. DIRECTOR will be doing Q&A after the film.

Invite your friends to the Event. Support the film, invite people, and the film will remain outside of the traditional corporate model of making/distributing films. THX!

Synopsys | Trailers | Other Screenings | Reviews

• “+ support the film” tickets feed the donation funds on the right hand side of the page.
• The film starts at 8pm sharp. Film is 90 minutes long. Be on time