Shannon Miller

Welcome to Pine Hill -- Brooklyn filmmaker Keith Miller was out late walking his dog when a 6'4'', 300 lbs. Caribbean American young man named Shannon Harper stopped him and said, 'Hey, that's my dog.' A heated argument revealed Shannon's lost puppy Prince was in fact Keith's dog (since re-named William), but the conversation evoked so many issues of race, class, and love that the next day Keith asked Shannon to make a movie about the experience. Shannon was intrigued enough to agree, and playing themselves (dog included), the short PRINCE/WILLIAM premiered at Rooftop that summer. Keith and Shannon became good friends and expanded the collaboration into a hybrid feature based on Shannon's life. Shooting long improvised takes with non-actors, WELCOME TO PINE HILL follows Shannon in a breakthrough performance as a recently-reformed drug dealer on an odyssey from the brokedown backyards of Brooklyn through the mountains of Upstate, NY, seeking transformation, transcendence, and freedom.