DOCUMENTARY REVIEW: UNDER THE ELECTRIC SKY (EDC 2013) (2014, US)

Dir: Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz

By Weerada Sucharitkul

Sundance Film Festival review

If a film could bring to life one of the world’s largest dance festival, then Under the Electric Sky (EDC 2013) would be it. Acclaimed director duo Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, renowned for their documentary Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011), brings to screen another fantastical music phenomenon – the Electric Daisy Carnival, otherwise known affectionately as “EDC”.

Starting with only a few thousand people in 1997, the EDC has become the largest dance music festival in North America. In 2013, nearly 350,000 diehard revelers from around the world attended the Las-Vegas electronic and dance music festival to experience three magical days of Electronic Dance Music (EDM)-fuelled passion, breathtaking pyrotechnics and interactive art installation, and state-of-the-art once-in-a-lifetime carnival rides.

Shot in IMAX 3D, the documentary follows the tale of a handful of festival attendees from all echelons of societies from all around the world, as they prepare for the adventure of a lifetime. Behind the scenes interviews with Insomniac team members – the founders of the EDC festival – showcase the faith and the passion it takes to dream big, to stage one of the world’s largest parties.

Yet as the film engulfs the viewer in an all encompassing meteoric high of light and sound, it is actually the intimate depictions, the solitude moments of reflection and remembrance, the quiet passing of hope and dreams, which plays to the film’s strengths. For three enchanted evenings, festival attendees are united in a utopian world full of love and free of prejudice, where race, gender and disability become inconsequential, and in their celebration of love, life and music, it is the closest they will experience to immortality and perfection.

If you had always wanted to go to one of the world’s largest music festival and never got the chance to, this is a film that you can’t miss.

Under the Electric Sky (EDC 2013) is ultimately a powerful film about the hearts that keeps the music beating and the living feeling alive.