Dust and Illusions (2009)

Dust and Illusions, 2009 (80 min)

By Olivier Bonin

Courtyard opens at 1pm with Interactive Installations and Art Installations. Screening at 7:30. Q&A immediately following.

Dust & Illusions explores 30 years of history of the Burning Man event. Born in the underground of San Francisco in the 1980s, the festival became the largest counter- cultural event in North America. It is unique in that it is created by the people who come to the event, the participants, not the organizers, and in that sense it has survived its original ideals/utopias, but the ideas have been eroded by time, pressure from the larger society. The film is a look at the evolution and expansion of the event to multi-million dollar business, and how politics might have replaced philosophies. WATCH THE TRAILER HERE

VIEW THE Q&A HERE

(in 5 parts)

Q&A following the film with film maker, Olivier Bonin. Born in France and educated with an engineering degree in microelectronics, Olivier Bonin showed an early interest in photography and film. He studied photography in San Francisco, where he found his way into filmmaking. Starting with short fictions, he quickly found a perfect symbiosis between his interest and knowledge in social movements and filmmaking in the documentary form. With his attendance to the Burning Man festival, he knew he had found a great subject combining film photography in such a beautiful environment, and a complicated human story of community building.

And Michael Michael from the Burning Man Organization. Better known as Danger Ranger, Michael is the legendary protector of our desert society. Some say he's the seventh son born of the scion of a seventh son. Others claim he possesses near borderline supernatural powers, including the ability to bi-locate and appear at two places simultaneously. This seems plausible, given his penchant for pervading the playa. In 1992 he founded the Black Rock Rangers, an institution patterned on the Texas Rangers and their historic role as guardians of a dispersed frontier society.

And Brian Doherty who chronicled the history of the Burning Man festival 1995-2004 in a book called "This is Burning Man." the story of what really happens out at Black Rock City, Nevada through the eyes of a participant. Brian is also the senior editor of Reason Magazine.

And John Law. John is an American trouble maker, culture jammer, and co-founder of the Cacophony Society. He is also co-founder of the Burning Man festival which evolved out of the spirit of the Cacophony society when a precursor solstice party was banned from San Francisco's Ocean Beach and merged with another Cacophony event on the Black rock Desert in Nevada.