Every fall, a city of 50,000 arises in Nevada’s isolated Black Rock Desert as Burning Man gets underway: eight days of a revolutionary social experiment in art, community, and self-expression. Ana Grillo and Beth Nelsen travel to the playa on a quest to delve deep into a subset of this radical population, the Beavers of Camp Beaverton—lesbian, bisexual, trans, genderqueer and beyond, who come together to commune and play. While Grillo is a Burning Man veteran, Nelsen is a Black Rock City virgin, and it is through her eyes that Camp Beaverton comes into focus as a place that puts the “wild” in this contemporary wild west with its notorious Strap-on-a-Thon sex-play party and its sex-ed tutorials open to both women and men. At the same time, the camp provides a safe and secure oasis for women to explore their sexuality or simply chill. This amiable documentary focuses on personalities rather than events, as Grillo and Nelsen explore what attracts women to Camp Beaverton in the first place: an open, supportive, and ever-growing sisterhood that just happens to be one of the biggest sexual playpens in the world.

— PAM GRADY

AQUAPORKO!

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Synchronized swimming becomes a radical act of self-expression for a group of Melbourne women in this effervescent documentary that follows these graceful and audacious fat activists in the run up to their inaugural performance, an irresistible blend of body politics, self-acceptance, and athletic prowess.