Story & Photos by Allie Gavette
People of widely varying generations, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds gathered as a community in the lobby of the Bijou Art Cinemas Thursday night to watch the one-night screening of Dust & Illusions, the first documentation of the full evolution of the annual Burning Man event.  Much of the crowd was made up of veterans of Burning Man (a.k.a. “burners”) who live in and around Eugene.
“There is certainly a strong niche audience for the subject matter here in Eugene, so I expected a good turnout,” says Edward Schiessl, an owner of Bijou Arts Cinemas.
The film documented the evolution of how Burning Man came to be an emblematic movement in America through video footage of the event during its thirty-year history, and with interviews with its key organizers.
“He did an excellent job conveying what was created and how Burning Man evolved,” says Aaron “Papa Bear” Wilmarth, a thirty-year-old veteran burner and student at the University of Oregon.
The event itself came to be located in an extremely remote dried lakebed in the desert of Nevada. The area had a “wild west” feeling in the beginning, where you could do whatever you couldn’t do anywhere else. People from different underground art groups in the San Francisco area were drawn to participate in the Burning Man event, while making their own creative additions each year.
The audience gasped at the spectacle of the more dramatic pieces of art shown in the film, which included giant structures constructed from wood and a multi-part, metal, fire-blasting dragon.
The film also pointed out some of the issues that came as the event evolved. Today, there is a clearer stratification when it comes to the people who attend. There are those who come for the art, those who come for the party, and those who come simply for the show. As Burning Man became more popular, two distinct groups emerged: those with money, and those without.
With its growing popularity, police became more involved in regulating the event, and Burning Man developed more organization and more rules. This did not come without controversy. The director, Olivier Bonin, made a point to address these issues in his film in a way that others have not.
“This was the first [film] true to the history and culture. Others were wishy-washy bullshit. This one nailed it,” said Kyle Marx, a thirty-one-year-old Eugene burner. “Most others are redundant and ignore the hypocrisy.”
Burning Man purists believe that the event is not a “lovefest,” but a very specific type of civic organization. For them, the participation of everyone in the community is what makes Burning Man so unique.
“I appreciated how this documentary showed both sides of the evolution of Burning Man and how it examined positive and negative as it came into the twenty-first century,” Wilmarth says.
The final credits were met with enthusiastic applause from the audience. Afterward, moviegoers were invited to ask Bonin questions about the film via Skype, which he does for all of the Dust & Illusions screenings. Bonin gladly answered questions about collecting footage, his goals in making the film, and other personal questions.
“The film is a medium to convey a message, and although it is pretty clear what that message is, it is good to talk about it afterwards, it makes the experience wholesome,” Bonin says.
If you didn’t get the chance to see last week’s viewing of Dust & Illusions, you can catch it when it returns to the Bijou on March 23.

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Documentary Sheds Light on Burning Man