Jerry Large / Times staff columnist
Cinema Diaspora: culture through film

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Hollywood makes a lot of money off that captivating power, and it will be on full display at the Oscar ceremonies a week from tonight. But because the business of moviemaking aims to draw in as many customers as possible, the big blockbusters tend to go for thrills that don't stick to the soul for long.

Some people seek out a more intimate kind of film experience, something that speaks to them more personally.

Stephanie Cholmondeley is like that. Last year she started Cinema Diaspora, with the purpose of screening independent films at the Central Cinema in her neighborhood, Seattle's Central Area.

Cholmondeley is a relative newcomer to Seattle, part of an influx of Californians who were drawn to Seattle's shimmer in the '90s. She told me she visited once and really liked the trees, and she thinks Seattle is cleaner and friendlier than Los Angeles.

More on Cinema Diaspora Stephanie Cholmondeley of Cinema Diaspora can be contacted at 206-860-7764, or www.cinemadiaspora.com.

But she did miss some things, among them cultural variety, especially in movies.

She says she has loved movies since her mother took her to see "Bambi" when she was a little girl and she was struck by "the power of visual senses being engaged," and by the ability of movies to teach and inspire.

Her mother, a dietician who left Mississippi for California, would take her daughter to museums, the symphony, the opera. "My mom took pride in exposing me to the arts," she says.

Each year, Cholmondeley would go through the guide to the Seattle International Film Festival looking for good films, and also searching out projects that involved black people.

A couple of years ago when she could find hardly any, it occurred to her that she should start her own film festival.

"We need something that educates and gives a historical perspective as well as social consciousness ... global perspective, because we are everywhere," she said.

She was an event planner in L.A. and figured she had the necessary skills.

While she was thinking about it, she saw a sign touting an effort to start a theater in the Central Area.

One man's project

The theater, which is still getting going, is the Central Cinema. It was started by an artist, Kevin Spitzer, who works in concrete and metal and who partly wanted a business that would free him from having to make money on his artwork.

The theater has about 49 seats now and is already showing movies, but his plans call for a 120-seat theater that would serve meals and be a community gathering point.

After Cholmondeley met Spitzer and the two talked about their plans, she dropped the festival idea and decided she would search out independent films and bring them to be shown at the Central Cinema, and eventually elsewhere.

Their goals overlapped, and meshed with the goals of lots of other individuals and organizations. There is a long list of collaborators on both endeavors.

Cholmondeley calls her project Cinema Diaspora in recognition of the fact that people of African descent live all over the world, and she wants to show work from around the globe.

Began with 'Image'

She showed her first series of short films one weekend in September. She called the series "On Body Image"; it included films made in Britain, the United States and Africa. One film was about a mother undergoing a mastectomy as her daughter is becoming a model; another on female genital mutilation; the third about black women in America and skin color. One was a humorous film called "Perfect Image."

"I believe that women are so bombarded with what they should be, how they should look, what is considered attractive and beautiful," she said. So she wanted to look at body image through the eyes of black women.

She's shown a series of films around a different theme each month since then and says she has been happy with audience turnout. So far, the project is paying for itself.

The film Cholmondeley wants to bring to Seattle this month is also a work in progress. "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" is director Keith Beauchamp's first film. It's not from the other side of the globe, but it is from a different time.

It's the story of 14-year-old Till, whose mother sent him from Chicago to Mississippi to spend a summer with his uncle. Till was beaten to death for allegedly making a pass at a white woman. Two men who admitted abducting him were acquitted by an all-white jury. They later bragged about the killing. What Beauchamp says has not been told is that there were other participants in the murder: three other white men and five black men who worked for the two men originally charged with the crime. He says he has interviewed witnesses and gotten more details than were in their original statements. He has been traveling around the country showing his film and lecturing on the case, hoping to persuade federal officials to reopen it.

Beauchamp showed his film in Seattle last fall. When I spoke with him, he said details were still being worked out for a showing in Seattle next weekend. See the information box running with this column on how to find out more.

Beauchamp says his goal is to fire up people to work for social justice. It's the kind of thing, Cholmondeley thinks film is made for; to touch people deeply enough to make a difference in their lives.

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.

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