“Harley” director Jean-Cosme Delaloye has wrapped production on a documentary celebrating pioneering Detroit techno music producer Carl Craig.
“Desire: The Carl Craig Story” is structured as an intimate portrait of Craig and an ode to his beloved Detroit. With Detroit’s decline and recovery as a backdrop, the film follows the career of producer whose genre-defying techno has been performed to jazz enthusiasts at the Montreux Jazz Festival and in the premier classical auditoriums around the world, including Carnegie Hall. The film features artists including Gilles Peterson, Roni Size, Laurent Garnier, DJ Minx, Kenny Larkin, Moritz von Oswald and James Lavelle, who worked with Craig and played a major role in bringing techno and electronic music to the masses over the years.
The globe-hopping documentary moves from dance floor to dance floor with stops in Detroit, the Montreux Jazz Festival, London, Bristol, Chicago, New York and Ciudad Juarez among many other places. The journey ends in Los Angeles, where Craig inaugurated his Party/After Party exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in April 2023.
“Desire” is produced by Dan Wechsler for Switzerland’s Bord Cadre films and Andreas Roald on behalf of the U.K.’s Sovereign Films. The companies previously collaborated on “Triangle of Sadness.” The film is supported by the Federal Office of Culture (Switzerland) and the regional film fund Cinéforom (Geneva).
“Harley” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020. Delaloye recently completed “Harley” sequel “Scars We Carry.”
Craig said: “I would love it if people had a clear understanding that touring isn’t just a rock and roll lifestyle. It’s not all glitz and glamor. I want people to see an aspect of my life that is as real and normal as somebody who works any type of job. I do get to do a lot of fun things, a lot of things that people wish that they could do, but my day-to-day life can be very normal, just like everybody else’s.”
Delaloye added: “I wanted audiences to feel Carl’s music and personality. There are so many layers, textures, and flavors in his music that I wanted people to understand. Techno is way more than mechanical beats and rhythms. It is the sound of Detroit’s racial and economic struggles. Desire is also the story of an artist who devoted his entire career to perfecting his sound while remaining fairly grounded, and created a unique sound that travelled around the world.”
Sovereign CEO Roald said: “Carl Craig’s music is both mystical and mechanical, reflecting both the exuberance of night clubs and the desolation in Detroit, and we are excited to be producing the story of one of the biggest stars of the electronic music market.”
