Cast & Crew

Trevite A. Willis, producer

Trevite A. Willis holds an MBA in International Business and has been continuously engaged in the production of motion pictures since 1999. She has produced music videos, short and feature films including the romantic comedy What a Man Wouldn’t Do for a Woman, and the African-American gay coming-of-age Blueprint, which enjoyed success at festivals such as the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, OutFest, NewFest, Frameline as well as others around the world. The 2008 Columbia University short film, Uncle Killa she produced earned the director a DGA Best Student Film – African American award. Also Uncle Killa was selected as an HBO finalist at the American Black Film Festival, and picked up by HBO, which began airing February 2009. Currently, the Bahamian drama, Children of God, based on the award-winning short film Float, has been selected as the opening night film at the Bahamas International Film Festival. Her music video productions have included works with Grammy nominees and winners including Shawn Mullins and Speech of Arrested Development.

Kirk Shannon-Butts, director

Fashionista (Glamour, Vogue, Rolling Stone) by day and filmmaker every other second of the day, Kirk Shannon-Butts, Filmmaker, is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. In 2000 Kirk graduated from Chapman University’s Cecil B. DeMille’s School of Film & Television with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Film & Television Production.

For his first film, Shannon-Butts delivered the stunningly beautiful black and white film “Beneath the Surface,” full of images of Black men channeling the B-Boy, the Homo Thug, the Handsome Man and the Shaved Head Muscle Guy. A blend of modern urban fantasy and erotica, “Beneath the Surface” is based on the Greek myth of Narcissus. “Complete Abandon,” Shannon-Butts’ graduate thesis film, premiered at the Jamerican Film Festival and went on to screen at Cannes, The Kennedy Center, The New Festival in film festivals throughout the world. “Complete Abandon” was one of twelve American short films selected to represent Pan African existence in the Diaspora.

In 2004 Shannon-Butts received a Jerome Foundation grant and the Plant-a-Seed Award from 1-in-10/Reel Affirmations for emerging filmmakers for his first feature length screenplay “Blueprint”. “Blueprint” was shot over 10 days in New York City and Upstate New York.

James Earl Hardy, screenwriter/executive producer

James Earl Hardy is the author of the best selling B-Boy Blues series: B-Boy Blues (1994), praised as the first gay hip-hop love story and prominently featured in Spike Lee’s Get On The Bus: it’s sequel, 2nd Time Around (1996); If Only For One Nite (1997); The Day Eazy-E Died (2001); Love the One You’re With (2002); and A House Is Not A Home (2005). The sextet chronicle the relationship between a Buppie from Brooklyn and a homeboy-bike messenger from Harlem. The series has been excerpted in BLACK LIKE US: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual African American Literature (2002); FREEDOM IN THIS VILLAGE: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing (2005): and Best Black Gay Erotica (2005). Mr. Hardy recently contributed the new introductory essay to the ground-breaking Black gay male anthology, IN THE LIFE (2008).

In addition, Mr. Hardy is an award-winning entertainment feature writer and cultural critic. A 1993 honors graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, his byline has appeared in The Advocate, Entertainment Weekly, Essence, New York Newsday, Newsweek, OUT, The Source, Upscale, Vibe, The Village Voice, and The Washington Post. His work has earned him two Educational Press Association Awards; grants from the E.Y. Harburg Foundation and the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors; and scholarships from the Paul Rapoport Memorial Fund, and the New

York and National chapters of the Association of Black Journalists. A recent online essay, “Sylvester: Living Proof,” was a GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Award finalist. He has also penned biographies on filmmaker Spike Lee and the pop music group Boyz II Men, both a part of Chelsea House publishers’ Black Achievement Series.

Born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, he divides his time between Atlanta, Georgia, and Gramercy Park in Manhattan.