Our Mission & History

For 20 years SLFS has been creating cinematic moments for our community. Cinematic moments are the experiences our audiences have every day at our venues. They can be moments of insight, when you suddenly understand more about a different place, culture, or world view. Cinematic moments can bring about the feeling of empathy, when your heart, even for a second, opens to what someone else is going through, and you stand in their shoes, remembering that we all have more in common than we have differences. 

Our audiences tell us again and again that they experience life-changing cinematic moments every day at our theaters. They tell us that they leave our cinemas with a deeper understanding, and insight into differing points of view, lifestyles, cultures, and landscapes. Their lives have been opened, widened, and changed for the better. By sharing a cinematic moment with others in their community they feel a little less isolated, a little bit more like they belong. As the late Roger Ebert said, “The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people…and the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. They let you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears.”