Rave Previews for Requiem for Detroit?

16th March 2010

Superbly evocative film documents the rise and fall, projecting archive scenes on to the side of the city’s derelict buildings and talking to the artists, ex cons and intrepid youngsters whoa re tentatively helping the city to live again.  Brutally fascinating.

-TIME OUT, Pick of The Day  

Unmissable, engrossing, thought provoking filmic portrait of the once great frontier city of the American Drea which now lies in ruins.  Artfully filmed, intelligently edited sound track this documentary is a darkly cautionary tale for the entire industrialized world.

- THE OBSERVER, Pick of the Day  

Powered by the car industry and designed for a life based around road travel, Detroit was once the embodiment of the American Dream but director Julien Temple’s film paints a very different picture, showing how it has now turned  into a dystopian post-industrial city that is the stuff of nightmares.

- RADIO TIMES, Documentary of The Week   

The last time Julien Temple was in Detroit, he was at the General Motors factory designing a $2million car for a movie but it was a lack of cars that brought him back. Detroit used to be the frontier city of the American dream now its basically a mad –made Katrina, a warzone on an apocalyptic scale.  Temple saw some chinks of light but was shocked at the dangers that was so prevalent on the streets “the lack of law and order, the rabid dogs, the gangs of armed scrappers who go into the old car parks to get all the copper and steel – they wave their guns at you”.

- METRO – Make a date for…   

Requim for Detroit? Took us on a journey of mass consumerism that embraced unionization, race riots and segregation and ended in the autophagism of the automobile. Temple kept his camera within an area of a few square miles, yet managed to make a film about the entire history of the western world in the last 100 years. There was an out-of-time beauty, but there is hope among the people to reclaim it.

- FINANCIAL TIMES        

The story of Detroit is full of contrasts: black and white; crime-ridden “downtown” and affluent suburbia; rusting steel and the green shoots of the prairie. BBC2’s Requim for Detroit? presents the history of America through the decline of its once prized  Motown.

- GUARDIAN, G2**** 

Detroit is where the American dream goes to die. This absorbing film portrays  Detroit as an experiment gone wrong. America’s fourth-largest city had the highest median  income of any US Metropolitan area until the collapse of the motor industry tore the heart out  from Detroit.

- SATURDAY TELEGRAPH - Pick of The Day   

This poignant documentary looks at the past, present and future of the City that once symbolized the American dream but is now a darkly cautionary tale for the entire industrialized world.

- DAILY MAIL 

THE WEEK - Lucinda Bredin, "fascinating"

MAIL ON SUNDAY - Pick of The Week

TIMES – David Charter’s Choices