Detroit Free Press visual journalists Brian Kaufman, seated, and Romain Blanquart, listen as Eric Seals talks about a section of his 49-minute documentary film “Graveyard of the Great Lakes.” (Photo courtesy of Eric Seals)

Magazine | Jan/Feb 2017

Making Films in Detroit

By Lori King

By Lori King

Her Sony HVR camera stood on a tripod in the center of the room as Detroit Free Press photojournalist Mandi Wright prepared to cover a news conference. A lesbian couple from Hazel Park, Michigan, were announcing that they were filing a federal lawsuit to overturn a state law that prevented them from mutually adopting their five children.

Wright and Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter were the only media there. So they covered the news conference, and Wright recorded an emotional video of April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse explaining their case and their family.

That video in 2012 began a long-term project that became “Accidental Activists,” a 79-minute documentary that captures the drama of a single court case that challenged and defeated all gay marriage bans in America. In June 2015, the Supreme Court struck down such bans, allowing same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

The movie is both polished and gritty and mostly a mixture of DSLR and iPhone stills and video footage. It shows what still photographers can do when they have a solid story and the support of an editor who encourages strong visual storytelling.

In this case, that editor is Free Press photo and video director Kathy Kieliszewski, who encouraged Wright to stick with this story throughout the family’s long fight for marriage and adoption equality.

When the project became big enough to become a long-form documentary, Kieliszewski came on board as editor and producer of the film. As artistic director and a programming board member of the Freep Film Festival, she knew the film would have wide audience appeal at the festival.

The festival sponsored by the Free Press — Freep, for short — began four years ago when Kieliszewski and executive director Steve Byrne wanted to show films

Kieliszewski strongly believed there should be a stage for those films, but Detroit didn’t have a film festival. So she and Byrne began planning. It took a year to convince the newspaper that it was something worth doing, but the paper finally signed off on it in 2014.

The festival started modestly but with success. One of the opening-night movies was Free Press executive video producer Brian Kaufman’s documentary “Packard: The Last Shift,” about the demise of the auto manufacturer. Kieliszewski said it was a huge success at that first festival, screening to more than 1,000 people at the Fillmore Detroit.

“The festival lets people know that the Free Press is a powerhouse in video,” Kieliszewski said. She said it was also good for brand awareness because people didn’t know the newspaper did film projects.

Trailer: Graveyard of the Great Lakes

Four years after the news conference that started a court battle on same-sex marriage, “Accidental Activists” was shown at the Freep Festival in 2016. Also in the festival were “Fire Photo 1,” a film by Kaufman, and “Graveyard of the Great Lakes: A Shipwreck Hunter’s Quest to Discover the Past,” a film shot, directed and edited by Free Press photojournalist Eric Seals.

Seals is a photographer who has embraced video at the Free Press. Since he began working there in 1999, Seals has earned nine Michigan Emmys and a national Emmy, and last June he won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for his seven-minute documentary on the Hydrus shipwreck in Lake Huron during the Great Storm of 1913.

Seals said the festival is a great way to offer strong community journalism and to promote the staff’s collective work. The Freep Film Festival has grown significantly in its short existence. Last year, it screened 40 entries for nearly 8,000 people in seven Detroit-area venues, making it one of the biggest storytelling events for the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett.

Kieliszewski explained that these types of events are especially important now “because newspapers aren’t landing on doorsteps anymore, and we have to get our stuff out there in front of people.”

“The film festival is a direct extension of the journalism we do at the Free Press. We want to be a part of the community in a really active and engaged way,” she said.

Despite resource challenges, particularly the recent loss of several photojournalists due to buyouts, Kieliszewski said her staff of 12 is committed to keeping its high level of work going.

“The festival is a passion of mine. I love it,” Kieliszewski said. “It’s the best thing I’ve done at the paper.”

She will be attending the Sundance Film Festival this year for the first time. The festival has a grant from the Ford Foundation, which will be looking for films produced by traditional news outlets to be showcased at the Freep Film Festival.

The film festival is a direct extension of the journalism we do at the Free Press. We want to be a part of the community in a really active and engaged way

Kathy Kieliszewski

Photo and Video Director | Detroit Free Press

A great example of this is “Last Men Standing,” a 2016 film by San Francisco Chronicle video producer Erin Brethauer and photographer Tim Hussin. The film chronicles the lives of AIDS survivors who thought they were going to die but didn’t. It will be featured at this year’s Freep Film Festival, which runs from March 30 to April 2.

Several Free Press films will screen this year as well, including Ryan Garza’s “Don’t Forget About Flint,” an 18-minute documentary about the Flint water crisis. Another Free Press documentary is about the 1967 Detroit riots. With Kaufman as lead writer, director and editor, the immersive documentary is an oral history that captures the 1960s and the riots through an extensive collection of archival home movies, newsreels and found footage.

Kaufman said the Freep Film Festival allows filmmakers like himself to get their work out there and to be appreciated.

“We’ve been trying to do long-form video work since I got here. But the bottom line is our online videos don’t get as many hits as a cat video,” Kaufman said. “They just fade into the background, and the only reason they come up again in a conversation is if they win awards.”

“So the film fest, more than anything, has allowed us to actually get our work in front of the community, in front of massive audiences in big theaters,” Kaufman said, “and let people know we have valuable content to offer.”

Write to King at [email protected]