DETROPIA screening this Saturday

November 12, 2013 by DickH Posted in Culture, Current Events 1 Comment

If you are near Lowell, MA on Saturday see DETROPIA – Film Screening + Post Film Discussion! Saturday, Nov. 16, 1:00PM, Boott Cotton Mills Events Center, 115 Foot of John Street, Lowell, Free admission! Guest Speaker: UMass Lowell HISTORY Professor Robert Forrant. A critically acclaimed look at what happens when the industrial bottom falls out of one of the world’s most important cities.

The most moving documentary I’ve seen in years. Both an ardent love letter to past vitality and a grateful salute to those who remain in place – the survivors, utterly without illusion, who refuse to leave. The filmmakers are so attuned to color and to shade that I was amazed by the handsomeness of what I was seeing. I’m not being perverse, this is a beautiful film. -David Denby, THE NEW YORKER

The evocative new documentary from filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp) is a portrait of a city that rose on utopian dreams, and then began a long decline to its current state of life support, all in just less than a century. The filmmakers pay elegy to the Detroit of the Motown era, with its thriving middle class supported by manufacturing. At the same time, they’re honest about the fact that the version of Detroit local partisans yearn for is long gone and most likely not coming back. -Karina Longworth, THE VILLAGE VOICE

Detropia (2012) View official website. Saturday, November 19 @ 1PM, Boott Cotton Mills Events Center, 115 Foot of John Street, Lowell, Free admission! For more information about the event, visit the Lowell Film Collaborative website.

One Response to DETROPIA screening this Saturday

  1. Linda Copp says:

    This is as usual another event presented free of charge to the public that offers pertinent information of how cities rise and fall, grow and can collapse. I am looking forward to seeing it and thank Richard Howe for bringing this event to our attention. This film should be indicative of some of the problems facing cities nationwide and offer us insights into what may help us avoid some of the pitfalls. Lowell stands at the precipice of either prospering and going forward with a vision for our future or perhaps stalling and even taking a giant step back by squandering what we have attained in the interest of immediate responses to far reaching problems.