Viktor Jakovleski wanted to see what it's like to be a worker who makes fireworks during Tultepec festival. Photo / Oscilloscope Laboratories
Those who remember the euphoric opening sequence to Beasts of the Southern Wild will immediately recognise similarities with Brimstone & Glory.
That is because both Beasts and Brimstone share the same brilliantly sense-inducing talents of producer/musician Ben Zeitlin, and although helmed by feature debutant Viktor Jakovleski, Brimstone & Glory has
certainly gleaned a lot from Zeitlin's explosive input.
Coming in at a modest 67 minutes long, this firecracker of a movie is appropriately punchy and zeroes in on the small(ish by Mexican standards) town of Tultepec, which once a year lights up to celebrate San Juan de Dios, the patron saint of fireworks.
But this is no "hang a lantern in the window dressing" kind of festival; instead, this is a brutally unforgiving two evenings of high octane pyrotechnics. OSH has no place here.
The doco loosely follows the fortunes of Santi, a young boy whose family is entering a float into the "running of the bulls".
The giant bull floats are paraded down the street on the second night and systematically ignited and blown up in all manner of ways. There is an element of machismo on show here as the pundits, who are mostly men, follow the pyro-fanatic faith like some sort of rite of passage.
