Spark: A Burning Man Story

Each year, 60,000 people from around the globe gather in a dusty windswept Nevada desert to build a temporary city, collaborating on large-scale art and partying for a week before burning a giant effigy in a ritual frenzy.

You have the anti-Wall Street vibe, the "gift economy" focus. Take this versus the millionaire CEOs who get involved and it is quite the walking contradiction. The anti-corporate Burning Man is itself basically funded by corporations.

I only knew of this festival indirectly, but now I see what goes on in the board room and in the field. Wow, what a spectacle!

This documentary tries to shed light on 3 aspect of the burning man experience. The struggles of the co-founders and artists to complete a massive undertaking for both themselves and the community they are all a part of. And secondly it's about the event itself with you getting a glimpse of bad times (1996) and good times (2012).

The showing of the actual event is pretty great not only do you see the diversity of the people and arts that go into it but you also get to see from a horror like shaky cam 1996 disaster of an event that lead to some chaos and even some deaths? or injuries.

Where the documentary fails though is in it's choice to focus on some rather bland conversations and weird shot locations (there's one where they go to public pool to talk to a founder who's in the water swimming). The worst parts thought are with the artists. You see how hard it is to follow through with an idea for an elaborate art piece at burning man. Problem is one of these people is highly unlikable while the other really doesn't have a satisfying payoff.

So only see if you're interested in how burning man came to be and why it's so important and powerful. Other than that the documentary doesn't go outta of it's way to show other aspects that would have been appreciated like how everything is gifting or bartering and people come together mostly because of the collective suffering which you really don't see in this.

This has been a green review

Burning Man is about freedom, lack of boundaries, openness, that spirit of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s that had more to do with the Dead Kennedy's and Seattle than LA Law and Washington DC. It's truly about art as art not commerce.

Can the unfettered human spirit be captured on film? It would take an extraordinary documentary to even come close: it needs Fellini or Russell as director - what we get is the PBS version - it's not only highly sanitized, as in just too sanitized, it's clearly unclear about who its selling too - it is seriously tepid and works as an historical record but little else - we got a good sense that putting portaloos up in the desert is hard - but little else.

Really its fault lies in picking story lines - if ever there was a great film to be made just by pointing the camera and letting go its this one - seeing the office workings, the planning committee, and then, frankly censored, rather than edited, moments is not what should be up there.

Spark is good publicity for Burning Man by letting you know its there, but this like Taking Woodstock totally misses what freedom is about and chooses instead to box in, and entrap, and just about diminishes the spirit.

There is a great film waiting to be made - and it should be way more unviewable. shockingly joyful, and just plain good old-fashioned anarchic than this - talking heads and modesty doth not a Burning Man make.

This evening a couple friends and I all gathered together to check out Spark: A Burning Man Story at Cinema 21 here in Portland, OR. We were all excited and still glowing from our experiences a couple weeks back in Black Rock City. This year my partner and I started a theme camp and this process provided a whole new appreciation for the Burning Man experience than simply being a participant could provide. I went into this film looking forward to sounding my experiences against a backdrop of historical information and the cinematically captured spirit of my favorite festival on Earth. Unfortunately I was sorely disappointed.

The filmmakers focused a surprising amount of energy on the negativity, stress, drama, and frustration that SOME people experience, to varying degrees, in their work on Burning Man. While some of the artists and administrators that were interviewed maintained a balanced and positive outlook, the bulk of them were so mired in difficulties and stressful situations that their best selves remained hidden from the camera. In addition, emotionally dramatic topics such as the 2012 ticket fiasco, the 'plug-and-play' camps, and the Occupy Wall-Street art played central roles in this film, but are not central to the spirit of Burning Man. In fact, historically, ticketing has been very well handled by the BMorg, 'plug-and-play' camps have a very minimal footprint on the overall city, and the Occupy art was a strong deviation from the status quo at Burning Man where protest art is uncommon, especially protest art that encourages emotions such as anger and animosity. I felt the choice of these topics was strange, but was hoping that later in the film we would be treated to equally compelling footage of the life-affirming, positive qualities of Burning Man.

This wasn't so. While there was certainly a substantial amount of eye-candy (HD footage of the playa and its beautiful inhabitants), these scenes were really just interludes between additional downer shots of the Occupy or PlayaSkool folks struggling on the Playa. The only redeeming thing in this film about Burning Man was Burning Man itself, with its wonderful 10 principles and guiding ideals that still managed to shine through the rather poor lens this film held up to it. If you watched this movie and felt encouraged to experience what Burning Man has to offer, then you absolutely must go, because the reality is infinitely better than this simulacrum.

SPARK is fantastic -- I loved this movie! I have been curious about Burning Man since I first learned about it. The movie offers one eerie, surreal image after another. Multiple camera crews on the ground and in the air capture the gathering by night and day -- bacchanalian revelry, colorful people in elaborate costumes, incredibly designed 100' high buildings, fantasy cars, giant statues and more.

No spectators are allowed at Burning Man, only participants. No cash is permitted; participants earn their keep by what they bring, and by the art they contribute. In 2012, 60,000 people attended the week-long event in the Nevada desert; it happens at the end of August every year.

There are plenty of laughs. The film follows two ordinary people, young artists who became extraordinary when they took the step of committing themselves to contributing major art pieces to the festival.

The movie includes footage of the first Burning Man on a San Francisco beach in the 1980's, and shows a Board meeting in crisis mode in 2012. We see the groundbreaking and construction of the 2012 event on the 'Playa', before moving on to the incredible coverage and stories at Burning Man.

SPARK is a truly stunning documentary film. Highly recommended.