Desire: The Carl Craig Story Premieres at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival

On Sunday, June 16, 2024 which happened to be the day before the end of the Tribeca Festival. One of the spotlight documentary films was entitled “Desire: The Carl Craig Story. The film was an inspiring journey in discovering the origin and passion of a dynamic force in music

Desire: The Carl Craig Story is an intimate portrait of legendary techno producer, DJ and record label founder Carl Craig and an ode to his beloved city, Detroit. Raised in a middle class African American family, Carl’s parents fostered his artistic pursuits, even if that meant breaking with his family’s tradition of pursuing higher education. With Detroit’s decline and recovery as a backdrop, “Desire: The Carl Craig Story” follows the career of a musical pioneer whose genre-defying techno music — which was inspired by a wide range of sounds, has been performed to jazz enthusiasts at the Montreux Jazz Festival and adapted for classical auditoriums around the world, including Carnegie Hall.

Thirty-five years into his music career, Carl Craig, a leading figure of the second generation of Detroit techno artists, has now been embraced by the visual arts world through his Party / After Party installation, with recent exhibitions at MOCA in Los Angeles and Dia Beacon in New York. But at the pinnacle of his creative and deejaying success, the musician faces challenges that could ultimately force him to stay away from the dance floor.

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.