Ecstatic ritual, danger and the absolute beauty of fireworks
The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days.
Artisans show off their technical virtuosity, up-and-comers create their own rowdy, lo-fi combustibles, and dozens of teams build larger-than-life papier-mâché bulls to parade into the town square, adorned with fireworks that blow up in all directions. More than three-quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of making fireworks by hand.
For the people of Tultepec, the National Pyrotechnic Festival is an explosive celebration, unrestrained delight and real peril. Plunging headlong into the fire, BRIMSTONE & GLORY honours the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.
”But [Brimstone & Glory] deftly captures the skill, passion and peril behind the fireworks, as well as the love of a family whose livelihood is rooted in this booming trade.”- Los Angeles Times
”A movie that repays being seen on a big reflective screen, one on which the image is projected rather than one from which the image emanates.”- RogerEbert.com
