Voyage in Utopia

By Laurent Le Gall

2007 | 83 mins

With a strong emphasis on founder Larry Harvey and temple artist David Best, this film expresses the scale and power of the Burning Man experience in 2003. Superb cinematography and editing are combined to make this is one of the most moving Burning Man documentaries ever produced.

“Every year, tens of thousands of participants migrate to the vacant heart of the wild west to celebrate this stupefying event by creating an ephemeral town, Black Rock City. These “burners” mix their urban culture with a certain type of improvised tribalism. For several years, Californian artist David Best , has built temples there with recycled material. A trip to Burning Man is a sociological and artistic adventure. Art is everywhere. The purpose of this documentary, through our extraordinary voyage, is to analyse the conventions, commitments and syndromes of this event became a mouvement. Burning Man is a schizophrenic testimony of an American society where liberty, tolerance and individualism often live side by side with competition, totalitarianism and commodification. It will illuminate for us the hidden face of the man who burns.”  – Laurent Le Gall, Director

“Voyage in Utopia is a remarkable piece of storytelling. It does what our event is said to do: it evokes the inexpressible, it invites imagination to inhabit the unknown.” – Larry Harvey