Unless you re hip to the Bohemian life, you may not have heard about this interesting phenomenon called The Burning Man.

Every year, artists, sculptures, spiritual types, and other assorted characters living on the fringe gather together in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada and build a city from the ground up for their week-long festival/party. It takes a year to plan and 1300 volunteers to setup up the town s infrastructure and erect the Burning Man statue that presides over the festivities. Then the people come in all manner of fancily decorated vehicles, bringing with them everything they need to survive a week in the desert because the only commodities sold in the city are coffee and ice. Each person that comes to Black Rock City brings something to the festival the gift that they want to share with the other festival-goers. The city has its own newspaper, radio station, airport, and countless theme camps.

For the past 8 years, Doug Jacobson and his group of friends have been attending the festival each for their own reasons: to share their music, explore their own inner challenges, or just for the 6 non-stop days of partying in the desert. They are a colorful bunch who provide plenty of humor and angst as they go about their experiences. Each year a theme is chose to inspire the artists and they definitely arrive inspired. The art projects and sculptures are amazing, beautiful, and often very elaborate and all of them are burned or dismantled at the end of the week, because nothing stays behind at Black Rock City, even the gigantic statue is torched in the festival finale.

To an outsider, the point of this festival might seem like just an excuse for lots of fire and nudity, but the documentary does try to capture the freedom of expression and joy that comes from all these creative forces coming together.

~the movie chicks