EAST JORDAN -- Light shone through the stained glass windows of Saint John Nepomucene Catholic Church as actors and re-enactors clad in World War I uniforms shot scene after scene into the night.
Father Duane Wachowiak, director of worship for the Gaylord Diocese, watched the action from a pew in the back.
"They were looking for a Greek Orthodox church but this was as close as they could come," said Wachowiak, of the small stone church standing in as a Russian church-turned-WWI hospital in the documentary film "Voices of a Never Ending Dawn."
Scenes for the film were shot on location around Charlevoix County Jan. 14-18. The woods and deep snows of the region approximate the territory in northern Russia where 5,500 Michigan-area soldiers were forced to fight a new enemy called "Bolsheviks" from the summer of 1918 to June of 1919 -- eight months after the war ended, said the film's director and producer Pamela Peak.
"We really got the shots because of the snow coming down," said Peak, whose film tells the story of the American North Russian Expeditionary Force, commonly called the "Polar Bears."
The filmmaker scouted locations in December and returned last week with several Michigan actors and re-enactors to shoot "flashback" battle scenes in the woods and a poignant death scene in the church. While outdoor filming took place during the area's coldest week so far -- prompting Peak to pass out hand warmers to the actors -- she said last week's temperatures were nothing compared to the minus-60-degree weather the infantry regiment endured.
"One hundred died of Spanish influenza, another close to 200 died of wounds, some died of freezing," said Peak, a Detroit native now living in Orange County, Calif. "It was so cold that when they got wounded, the bodies would freeze before they hit the ground."
Peak's documentary tells the story in the words of the men, many who wrote diaries like the one August Postmus of Ellsworth left his son, Mike.
"It was done in pencil and not very easy to decipher, so I wrote it out and gave it to a young man and put it in a book form," said Mike Postmus, a member of the Banks Township Historical Society in Ellsworth.
Postmus said his father didn't talk much about his experience with the regiment, who were outnumbered, undernourished and underclothed. But he said the diary speaks volumes about their hardships, which also included lice and fatigue from constant fighting under the midnight sun.
"They couldn't find night and they couldn't find dawn," Peak said.
The documentary also draws from hundreds of still pictures, about 20 minutes of actual 16mm film, and interviews from Polar Bear descendants and historians.
An actress and award-winning writer, producer and director, Peak said she and executive producer Larry Chase, a cousin, are making the film for her grandfather, a Polar Bear from Detroit. About 80 percent of the men were from the Detroit area, where a monument to the regiment was dedicated in 1930. Their families made American foreign policy history when they successfully petitioned President Woodrow Wilson to bring the men home, she said.
"I just feel sorry for why they had to be up there in the first place," said Postmus, referring to Wilson's -- and the British and French allies' -- hope that the fighting could persuade Russia to rejoin the war against Germany.
Churches in the Gaylord Diocese have been used as shelters and for concerts, but not for filming until now, said Wachowiak. He said the Diocese allowed the use of Saint John Nepomucene, founded in 1885 by Bohemian immigrants and named for the patron saint of Czechoslovakia, because of the film's historical perspective.
"It was something that would bring recognition to the church as a historic site because they were doing something historical," Wachowiak said. "And it shows that a church is a safe haven."
The documentary is expected to be completed in time for a May 23 premiere at White Chapel Cemetery Temple of Memories in Troy, where many in the regiment are buried, Peak said. After that she'll bring it to PBS or a PBS distributor like the one that handled her documentary "Colorblind," airing on PBS stations nationally since 2007.
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