With over three dozen programs – 36 features and two shorts collections – the San Francisco DocFest (at the Roxie Cinema, Oct. 16-29) provides one of the most entertaining and thoughtful collections of nonfiction filmmaking on the subject of human obsessions. With most programs screening twice, here's my pick of four not to miss.

Dust & Illusions: 30 Years of Burning Man There's probably no cultural event that expresses this city's wild, untamed spirit more than the annual orgiastic Burning Man festival, which to the untrained eye could easily be mistaken for a pyromaniac's convention. Beginning down at the beach in the 70s as little more than "a bigger family picnic," the spectacle of igniting this rickety wooden figure suddenly drew a huge crowd and threatened to dissolve into a mini-riot as the organizers were torn between police orders not to set the figure off and the restive crowd's chants of, "Burn it, burn it!"

Deciding that their ritual had outgrown its birthplace, the founders (including a group of feisty anarchists labeling themselves the Cacophony Society) decided to move the event out into a moonscape-like territory known as Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

Director Olivier Bonin attempts a 360-degree perspective on what has turned into a New Age city in the desert. He stages a film debate between the festival's crusty, avuncular founder, Larry Harvey, and freer types like Chicken John, The Flaming Lotus Girls and the flamboyantly queer spirit Adrian Roberts, the pink-haired publisher of Burning Man's unofficial newspaper, Piss Clear.

Is Burning Man to be little more than a Wild West free-for-all where libertarian types shoot their guns and peddle to the metal across a human-occupied desert, or will it be a no-holds-barred art festival? (Roxie, 10/17, 22)

Off and Running Avery, an African American girl living with lesbian moms and two loving brothers in an upscale Brooklyn hood, would appear to have everything a teenager could possibly desire. Avery was adopted, as were her bi-racial, Princeton-bound brother and her Korean baby bro. Their moms, one American, one Israeli-born, have raised them as Jews, complete with Hebrew school and the tendency to question everything.

A letter from her birth-mom sudden throws a hitch into Avery's plans to attend college on a track scholarship. While her moms support her need to know more about her biological family, including a trip to their Austin, Texas home, Avery finds herself more confused than comforted, especially when communications from Austin abruptly cease. Director Nicole Opper uses her all-access pass inside this most diverse of families to explore just how important it is to know who you are before you can decide where your life is headed. (Roxie, 10/18)

Cat Ladies How can you spot this most aggravating subspecies of humans? I confess I didn't realize my mom's propensity for herding cats until my best high school friend and his dad brought us a critter named Tar Brush. Months later, one tom had morphed into 50, complete with bizarre eye ailments, feeding bowls the size of wagon wheels, and our dinnertime need to fend off flying felines determined to upgrade their chow.

Director Christie Callan-Jones attempts to downplay the freakiest potential of the material by exploring the routes women from many walks of life took to become cat-rescuers or as one hunky dude from the Ontario Human Society labels them, "hoarders."

There's the attractive young woman from a fractious home who debates whether her brood has reached the dangerous tipping point where she has to confess to being a crazy old cat lady; there's the well-dressed former bank executive whose apartment started to fill up when she was the victim of corporate downsizing; and there's the chubby woman who admits to a bottomless hunger for companionship and strokes.

Callan-Jones steers a course between Grey Gardens voyeurism and animal-rights absolutism that was much appreciated by this cat-lady survivor. (Roxie, 10/18, 21)

Youth Knows No Pain Mitch McCabe grew up the loving daughter of a successful pioneering cosmetic surgeon. As she approached her own dreaded 40th birthday, the director decided to explore whether she had inherited the cravings of her dad's former patients to improve on God's work and fend off the signs of decay: wrinkles, crow's feet, sagging breasts and bulging bellies. Interspersing vivid home movies of her dad at work, McCabe shows us her own evolving jawline, and pays visits to a Southern belle with a bottomless appetite for a wrinkle-free future. Her most engaging character is a jolly rascal who sets out to turn himself into a plastic surgery-enhanced Jack Nicholson impersonator. The weirdest treatment mentioned is one that calls for injecting semen as a facial rejuvenating cream. (Roxie, 10/24, 26)

Info at: www.sfindie.com.