Cycles of the Mental Machine

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.

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."