>> ... Next Generation ...

Through Jewish
filmmaker's lens,
Detroit revival looks
much less sunny.

YAFFA KLUGERMAN I JTA

ake heart, America. Together we
can save Detroit while earning
some fabulous prizes. For a
mere $500, you can have an
abandoned home. Pony up $25,000 and
get your name engraved on City Hall. A cool
$50 million will earn you the deed to the
Detroit Zoo.
That's the offer pitched by an
enthusiastic, earnest-looking young woman
in the first episode of the satiric Web series
Detroit (Blank) City, which appeared on the
Kickstarter fundraising site early this year.
The campaign left many viewers
scratching their heads. Was the $500 million
campaign to save Detroit for real? Was
filmmaker Oren Goldenberg serious?
Turns out, he was — sort of.
The Kickstarter effort was legitimate,
though its goal was to raise $15,000 to
fund a six-part video series, not millions
to bail out a city that was soon to declare
the largest municipal bankruptcy in
American history. And it ended not with the
restoration of a great American metropolis
but with a private donor's pledge of $3,000
to create the first two episodes.
"For me, it was really cathartic,"
Goldenberg, 29, told JTA. "I needed

44

September 19 • 2013

to laugh about the tragedies that are
happening to the city because it's
unbearable to think of how absurd it is."
Goldenberg witnesses those tragedies
daily. He lives in Downtown Detroit and has
created countless films about a place that
once was an emblem of American industrial
might and now ranks among the country's
fastest-shrinking cities.
Through his company, Cass Corridor
Films, Goldenberg has won widespread
acclaim — most recently from the
prestigious Michigan-based Kresge
Foundation, which awarded him $25,000
and named him its 2013 Visual Arts Fellow.
The satirical style of the Kickstarter videos
is new for Goldenberg, but the point is
much the same as much of his other work.
Rather than jump aboard the "Let's Save
Detroit" bandwagon — a mantra repeated
often in these parts — Goldenberg laments
the privatization of a city once renowned for
its public sector, questioning the motivations
of those who have made its renewal a
cause celebre. In so doing, he makes a lot of
people uncomfortable.
"I go against the grain here," Goldenberg
says. "People think I go against everything,
which is not true. I just think that we can do
better."
One of his Detroit (Blank) City videos
pokes fun at the relentless branding of the
city and features a succession of logos read
by a robotic voice: Grown in Detroit. Invest
Detroit. My Jewish Detroit. Reclaim Detroit.
After three minutes, the point is clear: The
city's name can be used to say just about
anything.
"The idea that you can use the pronoun

of Detroit to mean something
for your cause is really
fascinating and ridiculous to
me," Goldenberg says. "This
idea of a blank slate, that you
can do whatever you want,
like the Wild West, and just
state your claim? No. There
are people here. There is
history here. There are issues
here."
Goldenberg is a Detroit
Billy Bondsman
native who grew up
_
Ace_n •
ea t 0 0 0"
in Huntington Woods,
Screenshot from Detroit (Blank) City
attended Hillel Day School
in Farmington Hills and
graduated with honors from the University
programs and recently raised more than
of Michigan.
$150,000 to update the building and plan
He was the only one of 300 students in
for a full-scale renovation. Goldenberg is a
the university's film and video program to
member of its board.
move to Detroit, where he worked on a
"We are going to be perpetually
documentary about the city's public schools
fundraising until our building is full and
called Our School.
occupied," he said. "This place should be
His latest project involves creating a
a medallion of what Judaism can be in
requiem to mark the razing of the city's
Detroit."
public housing.
But while the city's Jewish life is
Five years ago, he became involved
experiencing a rebirth, Goldenberg is not
with the historic Isaac Agree Downtown
optimistic about Detroit's future. He cites
Synagogue (IADS), the last remaining
cut pensions and the bankruptcy filing. He
Conservative house of worship within the
and his friends came to Detroit to do social
city limits of Detroit. At the time, there
justice work, he says, but they no longer feel
was barely a weekly minyan. He and a
the idealism they once did.
few friends began working on synagogue
"The way we are treated in the media,
programming.
the economy, how they treat buildings here,
Their efforts paid off. The 92-year-old
how they treat people here, what they do
synagogue is experiencing a revival, fueled
to them — it's horrific," he says. "These are
in part by Jewish communal efforts to
the deep problems in our society, shrouded
repopulate the Downtown area. IADS
over with a lofty 'Let's Save Detroit' and
attracts enthusiastic regulars to its daily
kids smiling. It's delusional."

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