Capers’ Fish – 16 Min.

Capers is a once-promising saxophonist who has fallen on hard times. He has been reduced to playing on street corners for money. Little Man, a homeless boy surviving on the streets, is so enchanted by the sound of Capers’ horn that he follows Capers home to an apartment on skid row. Just as the two begin to form a friendship, tragedy strikes, profound decisions are made and a tragic ending launches a happy beginning.

Frey Hoffman - Co-Writer/Director
Frey Hoffman has been passionate about audiovisual communications since childhood. His professional career began with Shakespeare in Santa Fe as Master Electrician and Lighting Operator.  After studying Digital Graphic Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Filmmaking at Chicago Filmmakers, he went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Film and Video, with a concentration in Cinematography, from Columbia College.  

Malik Yusef - Co-Writer
Malik Yusef is one of the country’s premiere spoken word artists. The Chicago-based poet lyrically blends melodies with words that express his wisdom, love and pain over a backdrop of jazz, hip-hop and neo-soul instrumentals.  Malik got his first big break when the director of Love Jones recruited him to train actor Larenz Tate for his starring role.

Hollywood Jerome – 11 Min.

Told in a lyrical multi-textured fashion built on a narrative poem, “Hollywood Jerome” is the story of a 14 year-old kid who is enthralled and bamboozled by pop-culture depictions of gang culture.

Facing daily personal defeats the strong and violent solutions of Hollywood gangsters hold a magnetic appeal to his unguided life. With his problems mounting and his hunger for his heroes’ lifestyle growing he joins the local organization that most resembles them, the slick gang the Blackstones.  When he becomes the focus of a police standoff he must decide which are stronger, his fantasies or his dreams.  Based on the poem "Hollywood Jerome" by Malik Yusef.

Christopher Babers – Writer / Director
Originally from Compton, CA; Christopher made his debut in the industry by acting in an Oscar Mayer commercial at the age of 6.  Christopher was selected as an actor to participate in the Sundance Film Workshop 2004 in Sundance, Utah.  Since then, he has taken an interest in writing and directing. Presently, Christopher is finishing up his last semester of film school and jump straight into the prestigious “M.F.A. in Directing” program at the American Film Institute.

Keys – 23 Min.

The dramatic story of a broken family that discovers healing within the broken keys of an old piano.  When Leann receives a grim diagnosis of cancer, she and her bi-racial son Eli travel back to her childhood home in the Midwest, in order for Leann to make amends with her estranged father. Upon her arrival, the healing between these two takes shape in the most unlikely of ways.

Nina Baby – 14 Min

Inspired by turning thirteen, Nina Wright, an aspiring jazz musician, decides to take a journey. She walks through the streets of Los Angeles giving her take on what's wrong with Hip-Hop music, people's prejudices, her loves, her dreams for the future, and peppers her soliloquy with beautiful interludes on her trumpet. No one listens to her or her trumpet playing, so she uses the camera as her sole audience.

Song of Pumpkin Brown – 31 Min.

Set in Charleston, SC, in 1961, “Song of Pumpkin Brown” tells the story of ten-year old Pumpkin Brown, sent to the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, SC, after the death of his preacher father.  There the shy, lonely boy is introduced to the jazz trumpet as a means of dealing with his grief and the first step in his destiny as a successful jazz musician.