Exclusive: Watch 'Prince/William' - The Short Film That Led To 'Welcome To Pine Hill'

"Welcome to Pine Hill."

Oscilloscope Laboratories will release Keith Miller's quietly absorbing work of cinema verite, Welcome To Pine Hill, starting on March 1 at IFC in NYC.

The film follows a recently reformed drug dealer, now working as a claims adjuster by day and bouncer by night, who receives some earth-shattering news, forcing him to make peace with himself.

It's a work of art that received enough votes to appear on the S&A Best of 2012 list, a film that blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction, presenting an atmospheric depiction of a journey to self-discovery and spiritual redemption, taken by an unlikely cinematic lead character - a lonely, single, relatively quiet black male in his 20s, who cuts an imposing figure, but who carries himself with a tenderness you wouldn't usually see in depictions of black men on screen.

In our review of it, we called it, the "un-urban," "urban" film, with a lead character that Hollywood wouldn't know what to do with.

Made in collaboration with the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, a group which writer/director Miller belongs, the film, a 2011 Independent Filmmaker Lab participant, World Premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival last year, where it won the Grand Jury Award.

What may not be as widely-known is that the narrative, inspired by a chance encounter between director Miller and the film's star Shannon Harper, who found themselves fighting over a lost dog one night in Brooklyn, NY, has its beginnings in a short film, titled Prince/William, before it was expanded into the feature film we know as Welcome To Pinehill.

S&A has been granted an exclusive look at that short film, Prince/William, which you're encouraged to watch in full below. At the very least, it gives you a glimpse at the style in which the feature film is made, as well as the star of the feature film, Shannon Harper, playing opposite the director himself.

It's just under 8 minutes long:

IndieWire

Keith Miller's PRINCE/WILLIAM - Full

Close Panel

Embed Keith Miller's PRINCE/WILLIAM - Full

Select width of embedded player:

300px 480px

Copy this code to your blog or website <iframe width="480" height="350" src="http://www.indiewire.com/embed/player.jsp?videoId=dc6240f0-8111-11e2-922e-22000a1d0930&w=480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Copy Copied

close

Share Keith Miller's PRINCE/WILLIAM - Full

URL

Close Panel

See more at Indiewire.com

Play Film