Cheers showed the trailer for “Fort Scott Stories” on Oct. 4, the last day of the annual Gordon Parks Celebration. He also gave a presentation about the project.
It’s the culmination of four years of work. Cheers and Kirk Sharp, director of the Gordon Parks Museum, wanted to honor Parks with a project similar to his 1950 photo essay for Life magazine, which originally went unpublished. It was later discovered and published in the book “Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott” in 2015.
Cheers also wanted to help the museum in its mission to keep Parks’ legacy alive.
“We all give and do what we can, so I said, let me up my game,” he said at the presentation. “Let me use what I do, take pictures and do films, and let me use that skill set.”
In addition to the 1950 photo essay, Cheers also drew inspiration from “The Learning Tree,” the semi-autobiographical novel that Parks wrote and then turned into a film adaptation that he also directed. It’s based on his childhood in Fort Scott.
According to Cheers, the themes he found the most prominent were faith, family and community.
“In Gordon’s book and film, these themes are as relevant today as they were 57 years ago,” he said.
Those themes were then the direction he used for the project.
“All it is is common sense and getting centered and slowing down and it’ll come to you,” he said. “That’s what happened when we started working on this four years ago.”
Like Parks did with his photo essay, Cheers interviewed people who he said “make up the fabric and the character of Fort Scott.” He worked with Sharp to figure out who to talk to. Several of them came to the presentation and watched the trailer. Mary Williams has lived in Fort Scott for seven years and knew right away that she wanted to be a part of it.
“I never thought I would be part of anything,” she said. “I just thought about, you know, just living and doing good. But telling a story about my beginnings and my ends and continuing, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful experience. It’s something that I cannot even grasp yet.”
Sharp commended Cheers for the way he connected with the people.
“That’s how Gordon did with his photographs,” he said. “He got to know folks first before he started taking the photograph. He didn’t just see them and snap. He got to listen to them, and that’s what Michael’s doing. That’s what Michael did.”
The “Fort Scott Stories” photo essay was recently published as a book and a limited number are available at the Gordon Parks Museum. The documentary will be released next spring. Cheers said during his presentation that he wants to have the premiere in Fort Scott as a fundraiser for the museum.
“The project has a very good meaning,” Williams said. “It touched my heart just hearing the other stories. Not just mine, but other stories. It's something to listen to and watch.”
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