Jacqueline Caux

Featuring the pioneers of techno music Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Carl Craig, and Jeff Mills, Never Stop takes us into the fascinating universe of techno labels in Detroit. This film highlights the deep roots of the creation, more than thirty years ago, by each of the African-American pioneers of techno music, of their own record labels.

This 57 minute-documentary film aims at telling about the social and musical destiny of Detroit. Within the maze of this city, which bares the marks of its different periods of peak, decline and rebirth…, with “ The Electrifying Mojo”s itinerary, the passer, the brilliant unifier of all styles, the creator of techno philosophy and Mad Mike the legendary creator of the first independant label Undergound Resistance. As early as the mid Seventies, “Electryfing Mojo” had a regular program on the famous WJLB. Downtown, next to the demolished premises of this radio, where “Electrifying Mojo” was on air with his program “The Midnight Funk Association”. His voice is recalling us the art of this mysterious character, of whom there is only one photograph, showing his face hidden by a shadow!

The film is by Jacqueline Caux, a French director whose work often touches on experimenters in modern and contemporary music, including the 2007 Detroit techno documentary The Cycles Of The Mental Machine. According to the press release, her latest film is less a straightforward profile of the inventive Detroiter than an impressionistic piece that draws on the mood and thematic underpinnings of his work. Man From Tomorrow is divided into two parts: the first part sets images to Mills' exclusive score for the film and features no dialog, and the second uses quotes pulled from interviews the director conducted with him. The director says there's no straightforward narrative or message in the film, though we should expect lots of the sci-fi futurism we've come to expect from Mills; as she puts it, "I wanted to give free reign to the viewer’s subjective impressions and physical sensations."