( Source: 'Gradually, then Suddenly' opens Freep Film Fest with tragedy, triumph of Detroit bankruptcy by Khalil AlHajal, Detroit Free Press)
The film premieres at the Freep Film Festival at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Detroit Film Theatre, inside the Detroit Institute of Arts, which played a central role in the city's exit from bankruptcy and in the documentary.
The film uses a combination of animation, sit-down interviews and dramatic reenactment to tell the story of one of the most pivotal moments in Motor City history.
Making sense of the bankruptcy case meant tracking and deciphering an endlessly complicated array of court filings, financial jargon, lawyer speak and propaganda from all sides over a year and a half of turmoil.
With the help of local journalists who covered the case as it happened, the filmmakers somehow managed to boil it all down to 95 minutes, colored by photography from the archives of the Detroit Free Press and WXYZ-TV. Former Free Press reporters Chastity Pratt and Nathan Bomey also helped produce the film.
The array of voices and depth of historical context included are staggering. The producers conducted more than 130 interviews in the process of making the film. "The more we got into it, the more the story unraveled for us," said co-producer and co-director James McGovern. "Not only the sophistication of the finances and the debt and how the bankruptcy was handled, but the human intersection — what the bankruptcy did or didn’t do — was so interesting. Because every person had a different opinion about it."
The story relies on the voices of journalists, historians, lawyers, sociologists, economists, politicians, labor leaders and activists, including some who vehemently opposed the bankruptcy filing and the state takeover that preceded it, fighting the proceeding every step of the way to the bitter end.
Past and present
The documentary delves enthusiastically into Detroit's history, reaching far beyond the time frame of the bankruptcy to answer key questions of context and circumstance.
"We just had a lot of hard decisions to make," said executive producer and co-director Sam Katz, "and one of them was: What role does history play in telling the story? That's the 'gradually' part. ... That then leads to the 'suddenly.' "
The film's title refers to a line in the 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel “The Sun Also Rises," in which the character Mike Campbell answers a question about how he went bankrupt with a telling if contradictory retort: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
"What we needed to do was establish certain things about Detroit and where its wealth came from," Katz said. "... I think the history of Detroit is so interesting. It's not just Henry Ford. There's a lot more to it. It's not just Motown."
Also well-established was Detroit's unique history as a center of social justice and labor movements, which powered the voices that guided the city out of bankruptcy.
"This is a place where politics is inbred," Katz said. "There's a history of Black power and Black engagement in Detroit that has exceeded a lot of other places."
The film isn't aimed solely at a Detroit audience. The lessons of Detroit's bankruptcy case are important to cities across the country, particularly those with underfunded pension obligations, Katz said.
Many of the problems Detroit was facing before the bankruptcy persist today, but the city's ailments do not compare in intensity or desperation to the period before its gargantuan debts were restructured and its budget stabilized.
The streetlights, for the most part, are on and the checks are clearing, and it's thanks to the sacrifices made by the various factions that engaged in prolonged legal and public relations combat for a year and a half, nearly a decade ago.
But the absurdity of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection being sought for purchase by an anonymous Russian oligarch, and the devastation of retired city workers being forced to sacrifice the pension and health care plans they'd earned with decades of hard work — those aren't conditions other towns want to learn about the hard way.
"The conditions that people of Detroit have had to go through ... I think can't be underestimated," said Katz. "... When city governments don't deal with the realities that confront them, they eventually will have to, and it would be better to try to deal with them, even the ones that are really painful and difficult.
"I think there are a lot of cities that will benefit from having that conversation, and I think that's what this film will help them do."
Free Press music writer Brian McCollum contributed to this report.
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