Carl Sandburg --Echoes and silences

Poet Carl Sandburg’s story is the story of America itself – the land, the cities, the people. He both lived and articulated the American experience in his poetry and other writing. The film creates a folk portrait of the small town by, the crusading young post, the ardent reformer and journalist and the passionate Lincoln biographer. It focuses on the less-familiar early years, before Sandburg became the white-haired legend we know, using Sandburg’s own words throughout. His autobiography and other prose works, his poetry and interviews with family and friend, poet Archibald MacLeish contribute insight into the man and the artist. What is the significance of the program for input? The two-hour program blends documentary and drama in a new way, shifting back and forth from documentary materials to dramatic scenes. We follow actor John Cullum as he prepares to play Carl Sandburg in these dramatized sequences and in a one-man show before a live audience in the film’s culminating sequence. This preparation involved actual visits to Sangburg’s homes in North Carolina and Galesburg, Illinois, and talks with family and friends. These travels are intercut with Sandburg’s autobiography, narrated by Cullum, and told through photos, archival film and documentary cinematography. On the soundtrack, Sandburg sings several folk-songs; the original score is based on folk-themes. The poetry is visualized mainly through photographs by great photographers whose vision was equivalent to that of Sandburg: Edward Steichen, Louis Hine and the F.S.AA. Group.