Screenwriter and film director Pete Chatmon, who expresses a concern for the imagery of African Americans on film, will talk about his work next week with Columbia High School students.
Chatomon is president and CEO of Double 7 Film. His first feature film Premium debuted in 2007. Last year, he was honored by the Tribeca Film Festival for his screen play, $Free.99.
Chatmon is being presented by the Adult School’s Hamingson Literary Showcase. A 1995 graduate of Columbia High School, Chatmon will meet with students during the day. He will also present a lecture at 7:30 p.m. at South Orange Middle School open to the community. The fee is $10 for adults and free to students.
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“As a filmmaker of color, or a black man making films, I feel a responsibility to the images I create,” Chatmon wrote in “A New Wave of American Cinema.” (Moving Pictures Magazine, Feb./March 2007).
“Movies shape our understanding of issues and/or people that are unfamiliar to us,” Chatmon wrote … “and, if this is true (which it is!), I am concerned about the imagery of African-Americans on film and how that creates and solidifies a stereotypical portrait of a race and a culture.”
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Among his work is 761st, a documentary on the first black tank battalion in WWII, narrated by Emmy-winner Andre Braugher.
He received the Creative Promise Narrative Award at the Tribeca Film Festival for “$Free.99. The screenplay tells the story of a complicated bank heist where twelve hostages quickly realize that their captor is more than he appears.
“While others may be quick to label what I do ‘Black Film,’ race is not a genre and the life I have lived is an American life that need not be hyphenated and sub-divided into something less,” Chatmon said.
