Requiem For Detroit

When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent.

Leaving behind the gift shops of the “Big Three” car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown’s auto-makers, the city’s ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.

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  • Johnny

    You can find this documentary on motionempire.com, the best source is the first Loombo one(for me anyways). Perhaps someone can upload that source instead so some people can actually watch it here?

    Great documentary, well worth the watch.

    • Fred Bazzeeda

      Dude! that site sucks!
      You click on anything and another 3 popups open up even when popups are disabled.
      Then it says to click on a button if your human and more popups come and still no vid. It wants me to install divx but I already have it. wtf? no way.are you sure that is the right link up gave above? if you don’t believe me, send me a message and i can send you printscreens.
      BR//

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  • NettlesScience

    Thanks for putting this on the web. It was absolutely as good as the buzz and as sad as my hometown. The Motor city’s burning, and there’s nothing I can do….
    W

  • David K.Ward

    ZThis documenatary left so much untouched. My home town looks just like Detroit. But it went under because of hard headed unionists that would not listen to reason. They drove the local Ford plant oput of busiess and killed the entire town. The problems are not that hard to understand. CHANGE is the essence of life and when you refuse to change, well nature will let you die real quick then.

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  • http://laxi.com Laxi

    Its look like WW2 remaining.

    When u dropped bomb on other countries and city … GOD will do the same to your country and cities.

    Wait for some more …. Soon! very soon!

  • guest

    It looks horrible. Cinematography is awful, and it kind of seems one-sided. It seems like they using a lot of words to say very little 

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  • Mgaston715

    This was honest and very educational but they really could have shown some of Detroit’s beauty. There’s so much they could have covered but they were so busy trying to prove their point that Detroit is nothing  but a fallen angel with a tiny glimmer of hope that they completely forgot. Sort of unbelievable, really. This is coming from a lifetime resident as well.

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  • detroit: de-future

    glass if half full. amazing energy flowing within the streets of d-town. i’m a transplant from what is nicknamed paradise. i joke with friends back there about this place/state being the other paradise. amazing life in all aspects of living has unfolded for me here. i’m all in!!! detroit is truly for lovers 😎

  • detroit: de-future

    enjoyed the historical education…good floc

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  • http://twitter.com/deliciousday Linda Rubright

    Absolutely the most disgustingly sensationalist and one-sided documentary I have ever seen. Not only is this National Enquirer-esque reporting style not telling the story, it is influencing its viewers to believe bold faced lies. (Is that shot of Woodward even Woodward? Is the shot of the “white suburban family” actually taken from Canada?) Three generations of my family have lived in the Detroit area. It has been a part of my life for almost 40 years. To show this movie as any sort of reflection of ‘everything that Detroit is’, is shameful. To show clips of the Heidelberg Project as if it is a reflection of piles of junk in Detroit and not to explain it is world reknowned art exhibit is irresponsible journalism. As is discussing the Thanksgiving Parade as “something of the past” when it to this day is a MASSIVE event every year in Detroit. To not show the numerous areas of Detroit’s amazing architecture, nightlife, sports, music, art and urban agriculture scene but just show burning building after burning building is an insult to the viewer and a disservice to all. Yes, Detroit has its problems. Yes, especially for those of us who are from there, they are extraordinarily frustrating and disappointing and YES there are amazing changes happening there (see http://documentaryheaven.com/detroit-lives/). For these filmmakers to be neither from Detroit, from Michigan, from the Midwest nor even the US to show up with cameras and try to convince people ‘this is Detroit’ is an enormous insult to its viewers, Detroit and the integrity of journalism. Shame on you.

    • jagger

      hey moron, i was just following up with your comment, what you gotta say now ? since Droit has filed for biggest ever bankruptcy ! Suck on it !

  • http://www.facebook.com/justcallmebill Bill Martin

    –the freeways empty at rush hour… really? Perhaps that segment was filmed at 8am on a Sunday, but it certainly wasn’t any Detroit freeway during rush hour… a fabrication, that part.

  • Brian Belanger

    WelfareWorld — “nothing for money.”

  • ironage

    Detroit is a prime example of what happens when racist black leadership purposely runs all the white people out of town. It becomes a third world hell-hole within 20 years. Philly is going down the same path. I have no sympathy. Show me ANY city, state or country that is run by black people that is NOT a hell hole!

    • ATL

      Atlanta…

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  • anujoshy

    Good
    I really liked this,Many Skills used as well. I Love it.

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