THE BEST Festivals

People do some strange things when they run out of stuff to do. Take, for example, this annual festival which takes place in San Juan de la Vega, Mexico. The sole objective is for participants to hit things with a sledgehammer packed with explosives so it blows up. Todd Hata takes us inside this wild and loud celebration.

Burning Man, Lollapalooza, and Coachella owe their existence to a series of 1980s guerrilla punk rock events in the California desert. Stuart Swezey’s documentary combines interviews of punk and post-punk luminaries with performances by Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Perry Farrell, and more. Drops 9/13/19.

There are lots of big, well-known festivals around the country, but if you’re looking for something a bit more off the beaten path, check out Rides and Drives‘ feature, which catalogs eight wonderful music and arts gatherings which are well worth a road trip.

Bloemencorso in The Netherlands is a parade that features floats made from flowers. And by floats, we mean gigantic, twisting architectural structures and straight up weird animatronic animals.

(Some audience language NSFW) At the Belfast Festival at Queen’s in Ireland, two performance artists put on a mesmerizing stage fight using special suits and tesla coils. (Thanks Rachit!)

No matter what your opinion of the megafest is, you have to hand it to the Lollapalooza organizers for getting the capacity crowd out of the path of this dangerous storm and safely back to raging.

Latinworks created several amusing ads that poke fun at the damage viral videos can do to national identities for the upcoming Cine Las Americas International Film Festival in Austin, TX.