The Burning Man Festival began in 1986 as a bonfire on San Francisco's Baker Beach, where Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a handful of friends set fire to an 8-foot wooden man and a smaller wooden dog. Directors Mark Pesce and Steven Piasecki trace how that small ritual, which Harvey later linked to sculptor Mary Grauberger's solstice bonfire gatherings on the same beach, grew into the mass gathering now held annually in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, with the effigy itself swelling from 8 feet to 40. The film also settles a common assumption: Harvey says he hadn't seen 'The Wicker Man' when he named the event, despite the obvious echo. Shot in the style of 'Baraka,' the documentary spends most of its half hour simply looking, letting wide desert vistas and the festival's sculptures, structures, and installations fill the frame with minimal narration. It works as a visual record of the art rather than an analysis of the community or culture surrounding it, tracking one bonfire's transformation into a full-scale desert spectacle.