Summertime – Watch the trailer for a Showcase of Young Spoken Word Artists

Summertime chronicles the intersecting stories of 25 young spoken word poets over a day in Los Angeles. Born of the director’s mind-blowing interaction with a workshop where performers from across the City of Angels recited fearlessly personal texts, the project was structured so that their voices could individually shine as well as coalesce in the context of a larger, unified, and gloriously moving narrative experiment — part urban musical and part sociological art.

Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelenos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver – they all weave in and out of each other’s stories. Through poetry they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers.

Directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, the film stars Tyris Winter, Marquesha Babers, Maia Mayor, Austin Antoine, Bryce Banks, Amaya Blankenship, Bene’t Benton, Gordon Ip, and Jason Alvarez.

Summertime will be released early this summer by Good Deed Entertainment.