“I’m a very Philadelphia centric person,” is how Sam Katz describes himself. This is the raison d’être behind the historian and former mayoral candidate’s latest endeavor, In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America, a 10-episode documentary on American history seen through the lens of Philadelphia.

The title In Pursuit serves as the theme of the series. Episodes move through time periods defined by what people were pursuing most, revealed in the episode titles: freedom, land, independence, common ground, and so on. Viewers can expect the cadence of a historical documentary, with narration by actor Michael Boatman linking reenactments, exposition from a variety of historians, journalists, musicians, poets, and legal professionals, further illustrated by maps and artwork.

“The underlying film strategy was to inform and entertain. In order to inform, we believe we have to entertain,” says Katz.

In Pursuit is not just a series, it’s a year-long film festival with multiple platforms, allowing audiences to stream episodes from the website, watch a hosted broadcast, and attend community screenings where post-viewing discussions can take place. The Citizen is a media sponsor of the series and will host a screening in the fall.

Making history with History Making Productions

Katz, a longtime business executive, is founder and executive producer of History Making Productions (HMP). In 2007, a few years after the end of his political career, he and his son decided to do something together. Katz wasn’t interested in pursuing money and clients any longer. While his son had proposed a video-focused marketing firm, Katz had been watching documentaries about Chicago and New York, and then asked himself… Where is the Philadelphia documentary?

They established the production company to do just that. Their earliest project was the documentary series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment, which became the seeds of In Pursuit. Though Katz looks upon it now as a “product of inexperience,” it does boast an 8.1 out of 10 on IMDB and won several Regional Emmy Awards. HMP’s catalog includes the critically acclaimed Gradually, Then Suddenly (2023) about the bankruptcy of Detroit, Before Hollywood: Philadelphia and the Birth of the Movies (2018), and Beethoven in Beijing (2021), on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s musical diplomacy in China.

In 2019, the team at HMP was pushing for a legacy project, something that would have “a long-term, lasting impact.” Katz was reluctant, but was eventually persuaded to reimagine Philadelphia: The Great Experiment as a new, sweeping American history documentary set in Philadelphia. Of course, Covid hit in 2020, and Katz feared those plans — and the company itself — were finished. But with the pandemic closures came the sudden elimination of costly overhead, while widely disseminated remote tools allowed the team to continue collaborating.

The series is financed entirely through philanthropy and grants. Much of the team has been working together for over 15 years, including director Andrew Ferrett and scriptwriter Nathaniel Popkin. Award-winning composer Daniel Slatkin was a new face brought on for the production.

 “The idea of enlightenment — a well-educated citizenry — is a Philadelphia thing.” — Sam Katz

“It’s about how you treat the narrator vs. how you treat the experts in how you compose the overall film,” Ferrett says on directing an engaging and informative historical documentary. “The history of Philadelphia is, in my opinion, unparalleled among any other U.S. city in terms of its ability to be used as a lens to understand the entire history of the U.S.” The team invested in hundreds of hours of interviews and extensive research. Ferrett cites the perspective of Popkin, who has been living in and writing about Philadelphia for decades, as key to the successful translation of history to film.

While In Pursuit was in production, the pandemic, the killing of George Floyd, the 2020 election, and the January 6 insurrection all took place. This became problematic as they attempted to interpret and extrapolate history while it was being made.

“It’s hard to do what we’re doing and not take notice of what’s happening around you,” says Katz. “And how do you recognize it without politicizing the product? What we found was that these stories we’re experiencing today, in many ways, were stories we have experienced already in different ways.”

The first episode focuses on the Lenape people, the arrival of Europeans, the Quakers, William Penn, and the introduction of slavery, all defining Philadelphia before 1700. The final episodes are still in production for their fall release. After the Revolutionary War, unprecedented economic and technological advancement, Civil War, the urban renewal of the 20th Century and its catastrophic collapse into urban blight, and the Civil Rights Movement, what thread could the filmmakers pull to bring the story of America into present day Philadelphia?

“History hasn’t matured, so we looked at stories that were felt were important to the country but were still rooted in Philadelphia. And we landed on public education,” says Katz. “The idea of enlightenment — a well-educated citizenry — is a Philadelphia thing.”

How to watch

Rather than shop the documentary to streaming services, the filmmakers chose to partner with museums and cultural institutions on community screenings to premiere each episode, and will distribute them online. With the exception of August, episodes will release monthly with a public viewing and be available the following day on the websites inpursuit.tv and historyofphilly.com. They hope to have 6ABC broadcast each episode in a hosted program using excerpts during primetime. The first episode will be screened February 19 at the National Constitution Center at a special invitation-only premiere event and will be live online February 20.

“This work was never intended to be a commercial undertaking,” Katz says. “The point of doing them is to make Philadelphians more knowledgeable about the history of the city. I would rather have an eyeball than a dollar.”

The runtime of the episodes that precludes fitting the show into a one-hour television timeslot is still no longer than an hour, and that is by design, so community screenings could include time for discussion. Screenings planned for PAFA and Philadelphia Museum of Art will be followed by viewings of relevant parts of their collections. A screening at the American Swedish Museum will highlight the connections between Philadelphia and Sweden. Though the audience is the Greater Philadelphia market, the plan is to market the film to historical societies nationwide.

“What I want is for people to talk about it. What I want them to talk about is entirely up to them,” says Katz. “There’s a lot of learning that I think motivates conversation about what is a good citizen. How do you get to be a good citizen?”

“My goal for the series ultimately is understanding,” says Ferrett. “To create this idea of a shared understanding, if it’s possible, of history, and even if that seems really impossible these days, I’m here to try.”

The first episode of In Pursuit will be available at inpursuit.tv and historyofphilly.com February 20. Free community screenings for all episodes are being shared here. 

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