“It was the most successful city the world has ever seen…that’s the comic tragedy”
“It’s like everyone had a great party and then they left.”
“The world just changed; it was almost like you were on a treadmill and someone hit the stop button. It went down hard and fast.”
“It became sort of a war zone.”
“Lemonade Detroit” is a powerful and inspiring film by Erik Proulx that portrays the spirit of a city that sank but hasn’t died. It’s a story of human courage, personified through cameo performances from community members who are fighting through hardship to reinvent the city.
Uniquely, Proulx crowdsourced the film’s production – creating engagement as well as helping fund the project. He invited others to become co-producers by purchasing frames or parts of frames. So far, 2,395 producers have funded 67,914 frames.
The film threads a powerful, emotive performance by Detroit poet David Blair reading his poem, “While I Was Away”; Blair recently passed away prematurely due to heat stroke – a huge loss to the community though he leaves an inspiring legacy.
“Detroit is a tough city, not for the reasons that people think in terms of crime and things like that – they always equate that to toughness, no Detroit is a tough city because you can’t kill Detroit.”
“I wake up every day excited about the possibilities of what can happen in Detroit”
“It’s a city that has begun to realize that it’s really only gonna be lots and lots of small solutions.”
“One building, one block at a time, one person at a time, one life at a time.”
Read an interview with Proulx in which he shares the motivation behind the film and its crowdsourcing approach, and a few thoughts about the film's impact.
Source: Dowser; Lemonade Detroit
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