A pair of New York filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, are creating a documentary on those young men who make a living in Detroit stripping abandoned buildings of copper and other materials. The short film draws on some of the material from their upcoming feature-length documentary, “DETROPIA,” which is premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
They view the film as a stark representation of the lengths young people without an education beyond high school will go to in this age of globalization. The filmmakers see their work as a “harbinger of things to come for the rest of the country.”
Here’s how The New York Times summarizes their work:
“Detroit lost 25 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010, and now, broke, finds itself on the verge of a possible state takeover. Yet visual reminders of a better time both haunt and anoint the residents here. The past is achingly present in Detroit, and the way its citizens interact with the hulking, physical remnants of yesterday is striking.
“A few years ago, there was a rash of power outages in Detroit, caused by people illegally cutting down live telephone wires to get to the valuable copper coils inside. The Detroit police created a copper theft task force to deter the so-called “scrappers,” young men who case old buildings for valuable metals, troll cemeteries to steal copper grave plates and risk their lives to squeeze any last dollar out of the industrial detritus.”
To read the full story, click here.
