Detroit Film Theatre

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Detroit Revealed on Film: URBAN ROOTS

Thursday, April 19, 2012

7:00 PM DFT Auditorium

Detroit Revealed on Film: URBAN ROOTS
(USA/2011/directed by Mark MacInnis)

Urban Roots is a moving new documentary that explores Detroit’s urban farming phenomenon, and the struggle to forge a sustainable future for America’s post-industrial urban communities. “Growing up in Detroit, my mom worked at a warehouse that distributed wiring harnesses. She was tough, the Michigan stiff upper lip hardened by wage labor and cold winters. I had never seen my mother cry until I was a teenager—on the day I picked her up from her last day of work. All my life, I watched the decline of the city, and suffering with it were all of us who’d hitched our hopes to the great American industrial dream. I never got to see Detroit in its true heyday. But I knew enough to know what it meant to lose that. My mother may have lost her job, but she never lost that stiff upper lip. And so it was with Detroit—the city that lost its engine but never lost its drive. And now, where nature has reclaimed vast stretches of the abandoned rust belt, Detroiters are reclaiming their spirits. Now, all around the city of Detroit, a growing movement of urban farmers is changing the way people think about food—and life in the “D”. –Mark MacInnis
 

Detroit Revealed on Film is presented in conjunction with the DIA exhibition Detroit Revealed: Photographs 2000-2010. The films range from bold experiments such as a 3D film shot in the abandoned Packard complex (plant), a tribute to the storied Grande Ballroom (Louder than Love), a kaleidoscopic look at the aspirations of Detroit's citizens and civic leaders (Detroit/State Theater) and documentaries about grass-roots efforts at revitalization and the urban agriculture movement (After the Factory, Grown in Detroit and Urban Roots). For complete program information click on the Detroit Revealed on Film link.

 
 

Thursday, April 19 at 7:00 PM