A probing portrait of Chris Burden, an artist who took creative expression to the limits and risked his life in the name of art.
Direction
Archival footage assembled like a disturbing time capsule.
Production
Rare access to performance art's most notorious archive.
Editing
Jarring cuts between museum banality and bodily horror.
Director
Timothy Marrinan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Burden's 1971 'Shoot' predates reality TV's obsession with bodily risk by decades, yet his controlled chaos feels almost quaint compared to influencer stunt culture.
The documentary reveals Burden destroyed most documentation of his early work himself, making this film's preservation ironically against his wishes.
US
