Love. Experiencing the world and learning from those you meet. Having as much sex as humanly possible. The number 42.

The most difficult question of the entire human experience – what is the meaning of life – has certainly garnered some fascinating and bizarre answers over mankind’s long reign over the planet. Filmmaker and Milwaukee native Julie Pifher hoped to find some more possible answers to the ultimate question. Pifher’s quest for answers led to her to an unusual place: a desert colony of 60,000 people driving homemade cars and covered in paint and neon lights.

This place, called Black Rock City, might sound like the strange result of some bad peyote (Pifher did describe it as "Vegas on crack"), but it’s very real. Just don’t bother looking for this desert city now, however, because like a sandy version of Atlantis, it’s gone without a trace. Unlike the mythical water-logged city, its demise is all a part of the plan.

"It’s a temporary city for one week, and then the residents burn it down and leave without a trace," Pifher said. "They actually put little micro-electronic devices over the dust to make sure that there’s zero liter left behind."

The bizarre one-week community serves as the backdrop to Pifher’s new feature-length documentary "Burning Man and the Meaning of Life." The film screens Thursday night at 10:30 p.m. at The Times Cinema. The one-night-only showing comes complete with live pre-show entertainment, including fire dancers and Milwaukee’s own modern vaudeville show, Dead Man’s Carnival, starting an hour before the screening.

The screening also serves as a small homecoming for Pifher, a Rufus King High School graduate who grew her love of filmmaking in class and on local public access television in Milwaukee before heading out to USC to study film. She now lives out in Los Angeles, writing scripts and helping to produce reality-based television content for National Geographic and TLC.

Her current documentary follows the evolution of the art-centric desert city as it is built and brought to life only to be burned to the ground a week later. Throughout the seven-day festival, Pifher asks the town’s residents about various aspects of life that reflect the lifespan of the miniature metropolis.

"We start with the beginning – how we came to be – which kind of parallels with the start of the festival," Pifher said. "Then we went through to life – sex, art and experiences. People spend tons of money and time building their art, and then it’s done in a week. Why do they do that? Why do we do any of the things we do? And then we go to death, which parallels with the burns."

For Pifher, it was this symbolic parallel between the fleeting nature of Black Rock City and the fleeting nature of life itself that intrigued her. She heard about the festival ten years ago but wasn’t quite able to get the pieces together to make a feature film. After testing the idea with a short documentary about the meaning of life, Pifher and a small crew were finally able to join the desert community in 2011, bringing along a video booth confessional in which people could answer questions about life, death and everything in between.

While that was going on, Pifher and her crew walked around the festival, trying to capture as much of the energy and vibe of the city as possible.

"People really go there with a sense of community," Pifher said. "Everyone there is very open and saying, ‘Oh, are you hungry? Let me feed you.’"

Everyone stays overnight in the makeshift town, and it’s a gifting-based economy, with the only items for sale being ice and coffee. The city also has its own infrastructure, with roads and even a DMV to give out licenses for the makeshift cars built by residents. According to Pifher, some people spend the entire year building cars and other creations to share with others at Black Rock City.

As you can likely imagine, Burning Man draws an eclectic crowd, spanning a massive demographic of all races, ages and beliefs. And with hundreds of hours of video answers from the booth, Pifher got quite an diverse batch of answers to her questions as well, ranging from serious to silly to just plain bizarre.

"The most common answer was love," Pifher said. "Some people said some really touching things. Others said there was no meaning to life, that it’s just what you make of it. One guy said the meaning of life was to have sex with as many people as possible without letting your girlfriend find out, which I believe made the final cut."

Another couple didn’t even bother with the questions and simply used the booth to have sex (something Pifher said she predicted would happen from day one). The wide, unpredictable array of answers and people, however, is exactly what Pifher was looking for her film.

"I’m always looking for good characters, and that’s what these people are," Pifher said. "They’re wearing these silly hats. They’re glowing. They’re really rich characters."

In the end, Pifher hopes that these real-life characters and their ruminations about the meaning of life give her hometown audience Thursday night something to chew on.

"Of course it’s just people’s ideas about life, but what’s cool about the film is that it’s intended to spark a debate or discussion about their own lives," Pifher said. "People will hopefully think, ‘Wow, life is short. What do I want to do?’ So it ends on a kind of inspirational note of, ‘Life is short, so get off your ass and go do something!’"

After probing so many people with some of life’s most difficult questions, it seems only fair to turn the tables on Pifher and ask what she believes to be the meaning of life.

"I believe everyone has an innate gift or desire to share something of themselves with the world," Pifher said. "I think it’s important for everybody to find that purpose of their life, whether it’s something as simple as volunteering on the weekends or wanting to have a kid and teach them about life. Everybody has that one thing that they can bring to the table, and if we all bring that with love, graciousness and the idea of sharing it, how much better can things get?"

For more information about "Burning Man and the Meaning of Life" and the screening Thursday night, click here.