Detroit: Ruin of a City

The Detroit Historical Society is celebrating Detroit’s 313th birthday with a full week of activities.

Monday–Friday, July 21–25 — The week will feature extended hours from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and include a film screening daily at 1 p.m. and family-friendly hands-on activities and make-and-take crafts centered on our key exhibits each day from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.

92 Minutes

Detroit, known as Motor City, once the fourth largest city in the United States, home of the Ford Motor Company, General Motors and other major car manufacturers, is nowadays a city in serious decline, which has lost more than half its population and much of its real estate. Until recently, residents would celebrate 'Devil's Night' on the eve of Halloween by going out and setting fire to dilapidated buildings. Houses, factories, stores, office blocks, theatres, even the railway station, stand in ruins or have disappeared altogether, leaving vast empty lots that have returned to nature. The home of Motown music, Detroit is also the most segregated major city in the United States, and one of the poorest, struggling to provide public services for its needy inhabitants. This film looks back over the history of the city in the twentieth century: over the rise and fall of the social system identified by sociologists as 'Fordism'; the way the city was shaped by the automobile; and its decline following the deindustrialisation which began in the 1950s, leaving it ill-adapted to the post-Fordist society of the epoch of globalisation. Much of the story is told through a rich variety of archive footage - of the Ford plants, mass protests of the Depression years, Diego Rivera painting his famous mural 'Detroit Industry', the struggle for trade union rights, the riots of 1943 and 1967 - through which the film charts the battle over the image of the city and its industry that began when the Ford Motor Company started making its own films back in 1913. Written by Bristol Docs.

This project is funded in part by the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.