Modern Ruins – Detroit
A 5-part documentary series
In cooperation with ZDF/arte
5. Detroit – Hope for the Motor City
For many people Detroit with its deserted center its giant wasteland. Raging unemployment and violence symbolize the end of the American dream. In the very place where the triumphal procession of the „American way of life“ started, it is now at the tipping point. But there is also reason for hope: the vacancy attracts young, creative people from all over the world. Young artists are discovering the empty factory halls for their art work, urban explorers climb into the many abandoned buildings, documenting everything with their cameras. The Urban Farming movement uses the huge wastelands right in the city center for growing their own organic fruits and vegetables. Bit by bit, they all change the face of the “motor city”.
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Parts
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Modern Ruins - Kolmanskop
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Modern Ruins – Fordlândia
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Modern Ruins – Lohberg
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Modern Ruins – Piramida
Press Echo
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"It is a bottom-up story about artists and small-scale interpersonal networks and how they function in the face of tremendous negative social pressures amidst a neglected built environment. (…) This is a story of people trying to figure out how to relate to a changed city. This is not an outsider gawking at the ruined Rome of the Midwest – this is very much a community looking at itself across a gap of years. (…) This film shows continuity in Detroit – that this is not a place of befores and afters, but where people have traveled a long and eventful line to get where they are today. This is not ruin porn – this is meta ruin porn. And that is a good thing."
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Modern Ruins – Detroit
A 5-part documentary series
In cooperation with ZDF/arte
5. Detroit – Hope for the Motor City
Detroit became the centre of the American car industry at the beginning of the 20th century. The “big 3” – Chrysler, Ford, General Motors – created a “Motor City”. The economic boom attracted millions of people who fulfilled their parochial ideal of the American dream. Detroit was modern, urban and fast. Here the first city motor way, the “Davison Freeway”, was built, as well as the first production line and the first street with concrete coating. Later the boomtown with the first Shopping Center became the model for suburbanization – which then was accepted in the USA and the rest of the western world. The oil crisis in 1973 was the beginning of the end.The “Big 3” closed down their old factories and build new facilities, often in low-wage countries. It was the demise of the metropolis.
Today one third of the entire municipal area is deserted and numerous buildings have been demolished. Altogether more than 4.000 buildings are vacant: abandoned, shut down and walled. In some streets Detroit resembles a ghost town. Street signs corrode. Grass grows on pathways. Wild dogs stray. Visitors of Detroit have to prepare for dystopian sceneries. Many houses are covered by ivy; tress and bushes grow out of their roofs and windows. And the current economic and real estate crisis tightens the situation. Empty buildings are not going to find new owners in the near future and every day the decay of the city continues with the return of nature.
Every corner tells the story of an urban dream and its slow decay. Joseph Adranga, 85, used to work in the Packard Plant when it was still big, assembling Studebackers. He witnessed the city in its golden age. Today, the empty factory halls are the setting for gloomy music videos.
Mama Pay Ceck runs a bar where writer Steve Hughes is a regular, listening to the many stories of hardship. Drugs, crime and unemployment shape the lives of the mostly black population, who are struggling to find a way out.
Like Olayami Dabls. a black artists who reflects his cultural heritage in his monumental sculptures, using the scrap material that he finds in his neighborhood.
Concept artist Scott Hocking discovered the empty factories for his art, building bizarre sculptures in the abandoned buildings. The film witnesses his latest piece of art coming to life: a gigantic egg-shaped sculpture, made from the marble of the shut down Central Station.
Urban farmers use the vast wastelands to grow their own fruit and vegetable – there are many ways to bring new life to the ruins of Detroit. Like no other place, the city embodies both: The disillusionment of economic downturn and the bizarre beauty and creativity emerging from it.
Director: Alice Agneskirchner
Cinematography: Sven Kiesche
Editor: Julia Wiedwald
Sound Design: Ludger Hennig
Composer: Eike Hosenfeld, Moritz Denis, Tim Stanzel
Line producer: Kathrin Isberner, Susanne Heinz
Production Manager: Sarah Maret, Nick Pastucha
Executive Producer: Anahita Nazemi
Producer: Christian Beetz
Commissioning Editor ZDF/ARTE: Marita Hübinger, Caroline Auret
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Modern Ruins: Detroit - Hope for the Motor City
FIFA Festival - Centre Canadien d’Architecture - Montréal
23 March 2013 at 1.30 pm -
Modern Ruins – Detroit
ServusTV
12 May 2013 at 9.15 pm -
Modern Ruins – Detroit
arte
24 February 2012 at 8.55 am -
Modern Ruins – Detroit
arte
17 February 2012 at 4.45 pm -
Modern Ruins - Detroit
Wendell W. Anderson Jr. Auditorium - Detroit, USA
05 December 2011 at 05.00 pm
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