from “le détroit” · the strait
A feature documentary on the Detroit techno producer reaches the city in May, more than three decades into a career built on his own label and the Detroit Love showcase.
Carl Craig started Planet E Communications in 1991, the year he released his first records under the label's banner. More than three decades on, the Detroit producer's catalog, his Detroit Love showcase, and now a feature documentary about his life have all converged in his hometown.
The film is "Desire: The Carl Craig Story," directed by Jean-Cosme Delaloye. According to the film's official page, it is an intimate portrait of Craig as a producer, DJ, and label founder, and a tribute to Detroit. The documentary had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2024 and screened at the Glasgow Film Festival before a run of theatrical dates. Its Detroit screening was set for Thursday, May 22, 2025, at Michigan Central in Corktown, per the event listing, landing in the same stretch as the Movement festival that Craig helped launch in 2000.
Craig came up in Detroit and learned from the city's first wave of techno producers, including Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kevin Saunderson. His early work appeared under a string of aliases, among them Psyche, BFC, 69, and later Innerzone Orchestra and Paperclip People. Planet E became the umbrella for that output and grew into one of the more significant independent labels in electronic music, with releases tied to Detroit and house and techno artists well beyond it. The label's own bio points to records like "Landcruising" in 1995 and "More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art" in 1997 as touchstones.
His most ambitious crossover came later. The 2017 album "Versus," released on the InFiné label, rearranged pieces from his catalog for orchestra, performed with the Paris ensemble Les Siècles under conductor François-Xavier Roth and with pianist Francesco Tristano handling much of the arranging. The project grew out of an earlier concert pairing Craig's electronic work with a classical orchestra, and it remains his last full studio statement under his own name.
Detroit Love is the showcase Craig built around the city's lineage, which he launched in the middle of the last decade. The night is framed as a continuous program rather than a string of separate headline sets, typically pairing Detroit names with international ones, and it has traveled to festivals and clubs in the United States and abroad.
Craig's relationship with the city's flagship festival has been complicated. He co-created what became Movement and served as its artistic director in 2000 and 2001 before festival organizers dismissed him, a move that drew real controversy at the time. In 2001 he filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the festival's producer, Pop Culture Media. He returned as artistic director for the 2010 edition, and in the years since has curated Detroit Love programs at the festival.
The documentary's soundtrack, released through Planet E, arrived digitally on June 20, 2025, with vinyl and CD editions following in July. It gathers pieces from across Craig's career, including remastered early material and tracks getting a wider release for the first time.
The documentary is the latest marker in a career that has moved between the dance floor, the concert hall, and, more recently, the gallery, with Craig's work shown at institutions including MOCA in Los Angeles and Dia Beacon in New York. The throughline is still Detroit, and still the label he started in 1991.
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