Detroit's old Chinatown and the Cass Corridor were ragged, down-on-your-luck areas of Detroit for decades. Now, the neighborhood is in the midst of a revival and has been rebranded as Midtown.
Nicole Macdonald produces her fourth documentary, "Last Days of Chinatown," which opens with scenes Macdonald captured from a window in her then-home on Peterboro in Detroit’s Cass Corridor — people ambling in and out of a nearby alley, some to sleep, some to smoke crack, some even to defecate, writes Ellen Piligian for the Detroit Free Press. At the time, 2011, Macdonald filmed them merely out of curiosity.
“I saw these anomalies and interesting characters outside my window and these observations led to more substantial inquiry," Macdonald tells Piligian, who goes on to write:
The hour-long film examines the history and the future of one of the roughest areas of Detroit for a century — once home and haven to Appalachians, an enclave of Chinese and a red-light district rife with drugs and prostitutes.
The film will be show at at 6 p.m. Friday at Cinema Detroit and 8 p.m. Saturday at Community Arts Auditorium, Wayne State University. Info on the film festival, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday, is here.
