How The Leelanau Historical Society's New Film About Lake Leelanau Came To Be

Documentarian Keith Patterson isn’t a Leelanau native, nor does he live here now. But after working on a project involving the Sleeping Bear Dunes a few years ago, Patterson found himself so taken with the region’s beauty and history that he set his sights on finding other endeavors that would bring him north once more. That drive ultimately led to the creation of Lake Leelanau, Spirit of the Lake, a brand-new 23-minute documentary that Patterson and the Leelanau Historical Society (LHS) will unveil at a world premiere screening scheduled for later this week.

Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Patterson attended the University of Michigan for film and then spent 14 years working in Los Angeles as a producer and post-production supervisor for scripted television. In his decade-and-a-half in Hollywood, he racked up credits working on TV shows for all five major networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW – along with a slew of cable networks. When he and his wife Bethany decided they wanted to start a family, though, they traded the West Coast for the Mitten and moved back to Grand Rapids.

While Patterson initially pivoted to an advertising career, he couldn’t stay away from film. In 2022, he started Manitou Films “with the purpose of producing world-class documentary series.” When a project brought Patterson to Leelanau County and linked him up with LHS, it set into motion the events that would eventually bring about the new Lake Leelanau film.

“We were introduced to Keith through the Sleeping Bear Dunes Visitors Bureau,” says LHS Executive Director Kim Kelderhouse. “They had hired him to do some promotional pieces, one of which was about lighthouses. He visited our museum to shoot a couple of the scenes, and interviewed me as a local historian regarding lighthouse history. He enjoyed that project so much that he wanted to do more work up here.”

As Patterson tells the story, he already had a relationship with northern Michigan – and with Lake Leelanau in particular – that made the call of the north that much more compelling to him as a filmmaker.

“My family had a cottage in Traverse City when I was growing up, so we would spend every summer up there,” Patterson says. “We liked to trailer our boat around to different lakes, and Lake Leelanau was always my dad's favorite. We’d put our boat in at South Lake Leelanau and spend the day going all the way through the Narrows, up through North Lake Leelanau, and through the river to have lunch in Leland, and then we'd make our way back. I remember doing that so many times when I was growing up.”

As it turned out, Patterson’s lifelong fondness for Lake Leelanau dovetailed perfectly with a local history story LHS was burning to tell.

“[Patterson] came to us saying that he really wanted to do more work up here, so we did an exploration call between him and our organization, basically looking at the question of whether we had anything we wanted to explore through the platform of film,” Kelderhouse tells the Leelanau Ticker. “We talked through a variety of ideas that we'd had over the years, and the one that kept bubbling to the surface was the idea of doing something about Lake Leelanau.”

According to Kelderhouse, Lake Leelanau tends to generate more frequently-asked questions than just about any other Leelanau County landmark – and maybe the most misinformation.

“We get a lot of questions about the dam here in Fishtown, especially: How did the dam affect the lake? When did the dam go in? Who manages the dam now? Did it ever generate power? Questions like that,” Kelderhouse says. “And then there’s also this myth out there that the lake was just a river before the dam went in. We thought all of that would be a cool story to tell through film.”

Beyond the shared interest that LHS and Patterson had in Lake Leelanau, there was another bit of serendipity at play: A donor had recently gifted LHS “some generous funding without any strict stipulations.” In other words, the stars lined up to make Lake Leelanau, Spirit of the Lake a reality.

The finished film is built around a mix of archival footage, sweeping shots of the lake itself, and probing interviews with eight local experts, including historians, scientists, and geologists. Together, those voices debunk the myths about the formation of the lake, but also delve into the history of the communities and industries that sprung up around the water over the years. In particular, Kelderhouse was passionate about ensuring that Native voices were a part of the project.

“We wanted to make sure we had a Grand Traverse Band elder – and preferably, more than one –represented in the film,” she says. “We reached out to what is called the Mindimooyehn Healing Circle, which is a new group of tribal elders who are a resource for the community, and they connected us with Linda Woods and Arlene Kashata, who were terrific. We really left it up to them what story they wanted to tell related to Lake Leelanau and water in general.”

LHS and Patterson will premiere Lake Leelanau, Spirit of the Lake this Friday, July 5 at the Old Art Building in Leland. The event will start at 6pm with a toast to the film, followed by the screening at 6:30pm and a Q&A with Patterson after. Tickets are $20 for LHS members and $25 for non-members.

And if you miss this first screening, don’t worry: Kelderhouse says LHS is working to set up an event at the Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay for sometime next month, and the film will also be screened as part of LHS’s annual Maritime History Festival in September.

See a trailer for the film here.