Directed by Stephen Lighthill • Documentary • 1980 • 55 minutes
In the 1970s and early 1980s Detroit was the setting for an unusual development in U.S. urban politics, as voters elected two socialists to citywide office. TAKING BACK DETROIT examines these people and their organization against the backdrop of a city in extreme economic crisis.
The film profiles City Council member Ken Cockrel and Recorders Court Judge Justin Ravitz. They discuss the challenges they face, and the vision they bring to their work.
Cockrel and Ravitz and their political organization, DARE, opposed the accepted agenda for Detroit - tax abatements for industry, federal money for developers, cuts in city services, abandonment of older neighborhoods. They emphasize that the city could be made to serve its residents first - though not surprisingly the film shows that promoting this idea was no simple task.
Up Next in African-American Docs
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Myth of a Colorblind France
Directed by Alan Govenar • Documentary • With Tyler Stovall, Monique Y. Wells, Thomas Allen Harris, Karim Toure, Akin Babatunde • 2020 • 86 minutes
For more than a century, African American artists, authors, musicians and others have traveled to Paris to liberate themselves from the racism of th...
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James Baldwin: From Another Place
Directed by Sedat Pakay • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1973 • 12 minutes
Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits o...
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Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris
Directed by Terence Dixon • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1970 • 27 minutes
Shot in Paris, a city in which Baldwin lived for nine years after leaving New York — a decision he has described “as a matter of life and death.” The early sequences find Baldwin uncooperative, even hostile to the B...
