The voice-mail message left in July was thoughtful – even if the caller was mildly frustrated.
He’d read a Denver Post profile of Don Cheadle, who starred in this summer’s gem “Talk to Me,” and wondered why celebrities like Cheadle (and Oprah) do not do more social-justice work in this country.
More precisely, the caller asked why Cheadle, who has been on the forefront of Darfur activism, did not act locally in Denver, where he attended East High School?
“My response is twofold,” Cheadle replied when the comment was passed along. “One. You don’t know what I’m doing. The other is,” he said gently, “you are moved by what moves you.”
He had recently returned from the Toronto Film Festival where “Darfur Now” screened.
Theodore Braun’s visually eloquent and riling documentary follows six characters confronting or living the strife in the war-torn region of Sudan.
True, the well-intentioned caller seemed to misunderstand the wrinkles and power of personal transformation.
Cheadle’s journey to becoming one of the producers of and characters in “Darfur Now” (opening today at the Chez Artiste) began with a film about a genocide.
The actor first traveled to Africa when he was cast in “Hotel Rwanda.” Cheadle was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his raw, hushed turn as Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who saved more than 800 lives during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Cheadle first met John Prendergast, co-author of the activism-prodding “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide and Beyond” at a U.N. screening of “Hotel Rwanda.”
They traveled on a congressional mission to Sudan and the refugee camps in Chad. There, Cheadle found evidence as jarring and demanding as the things he had learned from some of the “Hotel Rwanda” extras, people who had lived through that genocide.
Of that first visit to Sudan and Chad, he recounts seeing “people who survived attacks, survived rape, survived being bombed, shot at by government forces and chased on horseback by the janjaweed militia. They’d traversed miles and miles of desert with their families on their backs.
“It was amazing to me that these were people who’d survived the first onslaught and now were potentially going to die in the place they rushed to because the international community was not coming to their rescue.”
Initially Cheadle was reluctant to have an onscreen role in “Darfur Now.” But the documentary was intended to give audiences a number of entry points into the conflict.
And he’s in powerful, moving company: Luis Moreno-Ocampo is the compassionate, determined prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Adam Sterling is a 24-year-old activist pushing the state of California to divest its investments. Hejewa Adam and Ahmed Mohammed Abakar are Sudanese driven from their villages. Pablo Recalde leads a World Food team working to get supplies to people in western Darfur.
“I didn’t want to do it, I really didn’t want to be involved,” said Cheadle of his onscreen turn. “But the point wasn’t to give all the shine to me but to show what people can do from wherever they are.”
When and where one enters the fray is a recurring theme for the actor.
“I couldn’t get done what Adam (Sterling) got done – and he was a waiter and a student at the time,” he said. “And maybe he wasn’t going to be able to get on a plane with George Clooney and go talk to the prince of Egypt. But that wasn’t his job. He was supposed to do what he did, push a bill through the California Legislature.”
Then Cheadle reminds you of why the NFL looked to him to sing the joys of football.
“Play your position,” he said. “Not everyone’s supposed to be quarterback. Not everyone’s supposed to be the nose tackle. But you damn sure need both of them.”
