TOTAL DETROIT
URBAN ROOTS
Niegel Smith (6min)
Marc MacInnis, 2011 (90min
My teenage years were spent in Detroit. A city in continual decline. One that refuses to lose itself to those who fetishize its ruins. It’s been 10 years since my return. I do it carefully. Can I speak for this place where I no longer live? Yes. And I’m taking you with me. I invite you to walk with me in Detroit. We’ll start in New York and hop on a plane to the Motor City. I’ve got some shit to work out--you too? Pack your baggage. We’ll come back with less. For 3 days and 2 nights, we’ll sculpt, listen, light and sing. We’ll give ourselves to decay and possibility through techniques derived from cultural anthropology, performance art and experimental theater. We will make monuments with our bodies in response to public spaces; project words on to abandoned buildings to give them voices; volunteer at an urban farm to feed the hungry; and cleanse one another with the help of Tanaka Min ritualistic practices.
The film follows the urban farming phenomenon in Detroit. Urban Roots is a timely, moving and inspiring film that speaks to a nation grappling with collapsed industrial towns and the need to forge a sustainable and prosperous future.
09/22 @ 11:24AM
09/22 @ 12:21AM
WE ARE NOT GHOSTS 09/22 @ 03:52PM
Mark Dworkin & Melissa Young, 2012 (53mins Detroiters are reinventing the old Motor City as a vibrant new self-sustaining and humanscaled city for a post-industrial world.
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