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Chicago Heights celebrates the universality of Sherwood Anderson’s century-old stories. In 1919, Hart Crane said of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio: ‘America should read this book on her knees. It is an important chapter in the Bible of her consciousness.’ Anderson’s modular novel—a collection of interconnected short stories—remains one of the highest regarded works of American literature to this day, yet has proved resistant to adaptation as a mainstream Hollywood feature. That resistance continues in Chicago Heights, a stunningly vivid black and white, experimental, non-linear in - terpretation of the antique narrative. The film takes the originally all-white, century- old rural stories and tells them with a predominantly African-American cast in contemporary south Chicago, celebrating the universal power of the source while playing on its anachronisms. | 1| | 2| | 3| Synopsis Nathan Walker is a young man living in Chicago Heights, Illinois, many miles south of downtown Chicago. He finds himself entwined every day in the lives of his neighbors. They’re polite, friendly, down-to-earth people. But in any community, individuals have their own private passions that their neighbors will never know. Each has a long-suppressed secret, a disappointed dream, a fervent hope, a spirit-breaking fear. We accompany Nathan while he comes of age and observe with him as the layers fall away from this seemingly random array of ordinary people who, below their practiced, Christian surfaces, are extraordinarily human. Chicago Heights is a unified collection of miniature portraits—vignettes that capture the moments of joy and tragedy that will mark an individual life. | 4| NATHAN WALKER r e k l a W n a h t a N , s s u r T e r d n A The Book of the Grotesque: Concerning the Residents of Chicago Heights | 5| | 6| D A N T E H A R D James Barbee , Dante Hard T H E S T R A N G E R The Stranger, Jason Coleman | 7| | 8| P A S T O R C U R T I S H A R T M A N Gerrold Jay Johnson, Reverend Hartman K A T E S W I F T Micheale Nicole, Kate Swift | 9| | 1 0 | D O C T O R E L I R E E F Y Benny Stewart, Doctor Eli Reefy E L I Z A B E T H W A L K E R Keisha Dyson, Elizabeth Walker | 1 1 | Director’s Notes – Chicago Heights We’re giving ourselves a handful of unnerving challenges in our adaptation of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, a much-loved piece of American literature from the early 20th Century. One challenge is to transpose some of the characters and events of the novel to contemporary Chicago Heights, a step we are taking in part for logistical reasons. Simply put, we have no budget. No one who has worked on this film has made a penny; no one expects to make a penny; and all of us have invested a tremendous amount of time and effort. It’s been a labor of love. We want to make something a little different. We want to tell a story that resonates universally because it comes from our local experience, just as Anderson trusted the same instinct in setting his stories in the Midwestern town of his youth (Clyde, Ohio). Chicago Heights has been shot in part in the village that gives it its name, in a church near the intersection of Lincoln and Dixie Highways. It is a real place and also a mythical one. Our mythical Chicago Heights might more accurately be called Chicago Depths of Despair. As a team we have wondered whether our forced marriage of rural, antique expressions and contemporary south Chicago can work out. I think it will work best if we resist the temptation to force the narrative to function as contemporary films do, and in that interest we are embracing a series of anachronisms in our style of storytelling. We’ve decided that the author is best served not through bending to the conventions of cinematic adaptation, which are guided by the cardinal rule to “show, not tell.” We want to celebrate the beauty of Anderson’s words by showing how, when used as narration, they provide elegant illumination for the things we show. While seeing something gives us the freedom to interpret a moment freely, being told how to see, particularly in a voice as tender as Sherwood Anderson’s, has its rewards. | 14 | We’ve also decided to work with black and white cinematography. If the style of the film were to be influenced by one cinematographer, it would be Gregg Toland, who shot Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. Our frames are ruled by mood, dominated by black tones, perspectives influenced by careful and restricted approaches to lighting, altered through canted and otherwise unusual angles. That restricted lighting strategy also helps to conceal the fact that we can’t afford locations or art direction. Another big challenge for this film is its attempt to adapt a series of short stories. Audiences watch films with the expectation that they’re going to meet a protagonist in the early going and that a series of characters will have through lines that develop and intertwine over the course of the narrative. Here, some of our characters simply come and go the same way that they do in our source. But characters come and go in our lives as well, and there’s something that seems right about honoring the non- linear elements of Winesburg . If Anderson had wanted to write a novel, he would have written a novel. In many ways, Winesburg is largely an internal, if not a private narrative, and defies adaptation. Sherwood Anderson was never happy with any of the attempts to make performance pieces of his work, and we can only wonder i f ours would sit well with him. Someday, someone will adapt Winesburg, Ohio —someone with a budget big enough to facilitate a faithful period piece with well known actors and expensive production values. Our small film, we hope, will prove to be a noble experiment and one that is faithful in the truest possible way—at its heart—to Sherwood Anderson’s vision. Daniel Nearing | 15 | Director Daniel Nearing was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta. He studied literature at the University of Toronto and film at York University, where he completed his first nationally b roadcast film on juvenile homicide. He has worked as Producer, Director and Writer for several prime time documentaries broadcast on The Discovery Channel, Bravo, and others. In addition to Chicago Heights , he is presently shooting a docu - mentary about Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway entitled The Unmaking of a Great American Writer. Producer Sang Hoon Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. He studied philosophy at Sogang University and conducted graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he expanded his career as an independent filmmaker, a producer, cinematographer and editor. He produced the feature documentary Edit, which was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2004. Recently he finished a narrative feature film project, Second Moon, which was invited to the Pusan International Film Festival and played to sold-out audiences at the Gene Siskel Cinema in Chicago. Co-producer and lead actress Keisha Dyson (Elizabeth Walker) works as a freelance television producer for PBS and other networks. She has appeared in many theatrical productions, including Having Our Say, The Wiz, a nd A Christmas Carol. Chicago Heights i s her film debut. A festival award-winning director and producer, Seth McClellan’s documentaries on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and on family relationships have been seen on PBS and The Education Channel. As an actor, he has appeared in over 40 commercials, print ads, and independent films. Minister Raymond Dunlap, Jr. was born in Columbus, Ohio on October 2, 1958, the eldest son of Lillian and Bishop Raymond Dunlap, Sr. Minister Dunlap loved music starting at the tender age of two—stories have been told of how he used to sit at an old wooden piano before he was able to reach the foot pedals, playing the piano until he was exhausted. Recognized as a psalmist early in his life, he sings in many services, primarily at his church at 107th Street on the south side of Chicago. | 16 | CREW Producer: Sang Hoon Lee Director: Daniel Nearing Co-Producers: Keisha Dyson, Seth McClellan, Daniel Nearing Associate Producer: Mercedes Kane Screenplay: Daniel Nearing, Rudy Thauberger based on Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson Script Consultant: Keisha Dyson Director of Photography: Sang Hoon Lee Unit Production Manager: Seth McClellan 1st Assistant Director: Mercedes Kane 2nd Assistant Director: Leah Shortell Original Music: Minister Raymond Dunlap Still Photographer: Dirk Fletcher / Dirk Fletcher Media Works Graphics and Design: Lisa Klein / Pisa Design, Inc. Camera: Sang Hoon Lee, Dirk Fletcher, Don Winter, Daniel Nearing Sound Recordists: Leah Shortell, Masahiro Sugano, Elise Brown Gaffer: Don Winter Grip: Victor Collazo Effects: Matt Pronger Make-up / Effects Associate: Stephanie Portner Locations Scout: Lynn Werth Production Assistant: Robin Thompson | 17 | CAST Sherwood Anderson / Older Nathan - TBA Elizabeth Walker - Keisha Dyson Nathan Walker - Andre Truss Doctor Reefy - Benny Stewart Reverend Curtis Hartman - Jay Johnson Wash Williams - Ronnie Jarmon Louise Trunnion - Simone Wilson Helen White - TJ Weddington Kate Swift - Michaele Nicole Dante Hard - James Barbee Calla Hard - Raven Reeves The Stranger - Jason Coleman Tom Walker - Brian Harris Margot Williams - Tovah Hicks Mrs. Swift - Barbara Hogu Elizabethʼs Father - Homer Talbert Mrs.

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