"The Burning Sensation" is poorly shot, scatterbrained and lecherously obsessed with showing naked girls at the expense of the interesting art and people of Burning Man. Nohe's leering, lingering shots of women showering or dancing are tacky and the disproportionate screen time devoted to the nudie cuties misses the real point of the weeklong art festival in the desert. Here's just some of what he omitted entirely at the '99 fest: the real-life Thunderdome; the fifteen or twenty rave tents; the one-half scale "Small World" installation which blew up and burned; the firefall; the enormous clock tower; almost all of the art cars; the Burning Man opera; etc. All for what? So he could pack the movie with anonymous women in various states of undress, filmed as clinically distant as wildlife in a safari film (we never meet or hear from any of them.)
He includes some interviews with BM founder Larry Harvey spouting his familiar line (which was well-documented before this travesty of a film) and Q&A with a few other old timers; but beyond that, no effort is made to establish a history, a framework, or a context. This really has the feel of poorly-framed, unplanned home movie footage cut together and transferred to film. The big push it received (a premiere at the American Cinematheque) is inexplicable considering that there are at least two other BM documentaries that are far superior. Given this film's tacky emphasis on breasts, I wouldn't be surprised to see this turn up on Spice Channel or Skinemax, which is a shame, since that will only attract more peeping Tom spectators to come to Burning Man in the future bringing with them their videocameras.
He includes some interviews with BM founder Larry Harvey spouting his familiar line (which was well-documented before this travesty of a film) and Q&A with a few other old timers; but beyond that, no effort is made to establish a history, a framework, or a context. This really has the feel of poorly-framed, unplanned home movie footage cut together and transferred to film. The big push it received (a premiere at the American Cinematheque) is inexplicable considering that there are at least two other BM documentaries that are far superior. Given this film's tacky emphasis on breasts, I wouldn't be surprised to see this turn up on Spice Channel or Skinemax, which is a shame, since that will only attract more peeping Tom spectators to come to Burning Man in the future bringing with them their videocameras.
