THE TRAILER

I Have Always Been A Dreamer

16mm film transferred to HD video
Bluray and HDCAM
TRT : 78 minutes

Directed/ Produced by:
Sabine Gruffat

Includes Interviews with:
Jerry Herron
George Karyotidis
Mitch Cope
Constance Bodurow
Freda G. Sampson
Colin Branson
Co-lab Creative
Matt Kelson
Douglas Crawford
Toufic Araman

Additional Camera and Sound Recording:
Bill Brown
Ben Russell

Audio Mastering:
Paul Geluso

Music:
Nathan Halverson
Stephen Vitiello

I Have Always Been A Dreamer is a documentary travelogue and film portrait of two cities in contrasting states of development: Dubai, UAE and Detroit, U.S.A. Within the context of a boom and bust economy, the film questions the collective ideologies that shape the physical landscape and impact local communities.

Though these cities represent two different economic eras (Fordist and Post-Fordist), both cities vividly illustrate the effects of economic monocultures and the arbitrary consequences of geopolitical advantage. The film serves as a visual documentation of these two cities as indexes of political, cultural and economic change while tracing the ways each city’s development is tied to technologies of communication, production, labor, and consumption.

The portion of the film concerning Dubai depicts a postmodern city in a continual process of being built, and posits Dubai as virtual in the sense that it is artificial, performed and shaped by an increasingly service-based economy driven by tourism. By contrast, the portion of the film depicting Detroit reveals a once shining example of a Fordist city presently in ruins and in the process of being vacated, beleaguered by a failing industrial-based economy vacillating between ideologies of self-preservation and destruction.

The film was shot in Detroit, MI and Dubai, UAE, exploring their landscape through various modes of transport, and includes interviews with local historians, scholars, and artists. The film was produced between 2007 and 2011.