Last month, the news dropped that Pete Tong had been enlisted by Netflix as music supervisor for its upcoming dance-focused film XOXO —“a coming-of-age ensemble set at the biggest (fictional) rave in America”—due to arrive on the streaming platform in August. Now Director Christopher Louie has spoken about his own recent adventure to EDC Las Vegas.
“A couple weekends ago, I went to the biggest rave in America,” he revealed in a Medium post .
“From what I experienced as a kid—joining 1,000 people in abandoned warehouses—to being among 150,000 people at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it’s clear that rave culture has reached the masses… The core traditions still stand: dance, adornment, totems and most of all, community.”
While Louie’s upcoming filmis set at an imaginary rave, he says it’s inspired by his own early experiences in the US rave scene, emphasizing that “it’s important that the community for whom I made the movie understand XOXO is a movie ‘by the people, for the people.’”
Detailing his experiences at EDC Vegas last month, when he visited to spread the word about XOXO with a grassroots campaign, Louie also points out the parallels he sees between the rituals of rave and those of early civilizations, like the Pueblo Indians and Aboriginal tribes.
“As we evolve technologically, communities are changing shape and moving to digital spaces; face-to-face conversations have been replaced with email, and phone calls with texts. I think raves and festivals give us that sense of community and belonging that we’re now lacking.”
Check out “How We Learned to Spread Love at the Biggest Rave in the World” over at Medium to read the post in full.
