Filmmaking – Screaming Flowers Films
John Pepin has made two independent documentary films and has been researching, ground-truthing settings, personalities, and scenes for a new project.
The Enemy in Our Midst: Nazi Prisoner of War Camps in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
From 1944-1946, a strange chapter in the history of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan unfolded. For a little more than two years, roughly 1,100 German prisoners of war were held in these remote north woods at five prisoner-of-war branch camps.
Brought in first under a cloak of relative secrecy by the U.S. Army, the prisoners would eventually be encountered by some of the local residents.
Across the United States, there were about 375,000 German POWs at more than 500 branch camps or 155 base camps. But despite these staggering numbers, 60 years after the fact, the story of their captivity remained largely untold.
In this 2004 documentary, filmmakers John Pepin and Jackie Chandonnet first revealed the story of the Upper Peninsula’s POW camps in great detail, capturing an aspect of World War II history that many feared would fade into obscurity without being recorded.
This film features modern visits to the camps to document remnants of crumbling artifacts, rare vintage film footage and photographs, and interviews with two former German prisoners who retell the stories of their captures, internment, repatriation, and eventual return to the United States to build new lives.
Most of the people interviewed in this documentary have since passed away, but their stories remain. That was their wish. It’s been a great honor to help fulfill that wish.
The genesis for this film occurred in late 1999 when Pepin, then an award-winning journalist and photographer for The Mining Journal, produced a series of five articles on the POW camps.
He had first heard about the Nazi prisoners as a local legend that he decided to sift for historical truth.
With the popularity of those articles, talk of making a documentary film to expand on the subject emerged.
But it wasn’t until early 2002 that Pepin decided to undertake the project with the help of Chandonnet, who was then an award-winning reporter and evening news anchorwoman for WLUC-TV6 in Marquette, Michigan.
The original intention of this project was to collect interviews, information, and resources as a place to start for those who would come later to research. Homemade maps and other makeshift props helped tell the story. A trailer is available here: https://youtu.be/iBlQ1b-yPYI.
Anatomy ‘59: The Making of a Classic Motion Picture
This 60-minute documentary film was released on June 29, 2009, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the “world preview” of Otto Preminger’s “Anatomy of a Murder,” a gritty courtroom drama filmed entirely on location in Marquette County, Michigan in 1959.
Filmmaker John Pepin interviewed the remaining actors from “Anatomy of a Murder” for his documentary, including Ben Gazzara, Orson Bean, Kathryn Grant-Crosby, and Don Ross.
Additional interviews include Otto Preminger biographer Foster Hirsch and numerous locals who worked as extras or were otherwise connected to “Anatomy of a Murder” in Marquette County.
The documentary also connects the dots between the original 1952 true crime bestselling book and Preminger’s classic courtroom drama, which starred James Stewart, Ben Gazzara, George C. Scott, Lee Remick, and Arthur O’Connell.
The movie was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
John Voelker, who wrote under the pen name Robert Traver, was the defense attorney in the original trial. He later wrote “Anatomy of a Murder” based on the trial.
As a Michigan Supreme Court Justice, Voelker worked as a consultant on “Anatomy of a Murder,” and his family home served as a location for the law offices of protagonist Paul Biegler.
“Anatomy ’59: The Making of a Classic Motion Picture” premiered on public television stations across Michigan on June 29, 2009. The documentary subsequently has been shown on television on various stations across the country.
The film likely contains Ben Gazzara’s last interview on the subject of “Anatomy of a Murder.” A trailer is available here: https://youtu.be/A4w5TuWbEqE.
An interview with “Anatomy ‘59” director-producer-writer John Pepin from 2009 in the studios of WNMU-TV13 is available here at https://youtu.be/IEdepiQC9G0.