Requiem for Detroit Directed by Julien Temple
Last year in November, I came by chance, across the Documentary Requiem for Detroit, at the end of the program I made the decision I had to go there. The documentary was structured perfectly, using sourced footage and a wonderful array of Detroiters, who each and all were proud and positive about their city, Detroit was the fourth largest city in america in the 1950s. What happened to Detroit? Many thing happened, When Ford invented his Horseless carriage, his aim was to make his model T affordable for everyone. Ford was offering $5 wage which was double the going wage at the time, 10,000 people turned up at the factory door. A huge part of the workforce was black the majority coming from the south, mostly plantation workers. Ford divided the town Making Black Suburbs and white suburb such as Inkster and Dearborn. If a black family moved into a white area they were harassed until they finally had to move. Ford was a very smart/evil man he set the town up so as through certain tax breaks he siphoned all the money out of the city into his and others own private fiefdoms.
Under such oppression the black Community rose up it the 1942 and 1967 roits, the two largest riots in American History. This events triggered what was called the Great White flight, the white population moved into gated suburbs on the outskirts of the city. Leaving the city with no infrastructure, no funding and or maintenance. So crime and drug use became rampant. Detroit at one point becoming one of americas most dangerous city.
Towards the end of the film , the story beginns to change. Here is a quote from Temple in an article from the Guardian, March 2010.
With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first "post-American" city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer's map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all.
www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10/detroit-motor-city-urban-decline
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