rectified

Three years ago I went to a screening of Detroit: Ruin of a City which was showing as part of the Brighton Cine-City festival. I'd been particularly interested in going along because, for many years, I've had a strange fascination with Detroit - known as Motor City - a city famed for its car production and being the home to Motown.

Detroit once boomed, and at its height was the fourth largest city in the United States. In the 1950s 1.8 million people lived there. But since then the riots of 1943 and 1967 (which saw federal troops on the city's streets), deindustrialisation and white-flight have decimated the city: more than half the population has gone and vast swaths have become urban prairie. Land where vacant buildings have been demolished or crumbled to the ground has returned to its natural state while other abandoned buildings have become overrun with grass, weeds and trees. This desolation affects the whole city, not just neighbourhoods - downtown Detroit has abandoned skyscrapers, movie theatres and office buildings.

Eagerly, I turned up for the screening one cold winter evening at the Sallis Benney theatre. The film was fascinating. But then, about half an hour or so in, it stopped. There was a bit of fiddling with the equipment but after a few minutes it was clear there was a fault with the DVD that couldn't be rectified. The screening had to be stopped and I was gutted. I've never got over the disappointment...

But then yesterday, in a rare flash of inspiration, I remembered that Detroit: Ruin of a City was co-produced by a professor at the university I'm now working at. A quick look on the library catalogue showed that the film is in stock (albeit at another site) but I've requested it and hopefully it's winging it's way to me as I type this...

Just hope it's not the dud copy...