I went to a screening of the documentary, Senator Obama Goes to Africa, at the Skokie Theater last night. It was filmed back in August 2006 when Obama went on his first foreign diplomatic trip to the African continent and before he announced his presidential candidacy. The film's been available on DVD since late 2007, but with the momentum of Obama's presidential campaign, has been shown in a handful of theaters here in the U.S.
The documentary follows Obama as he meets with political figures, humanitarian workers, refugees and educators. In Kenya, he spoke at the University of Nairobi to students and professors, and also to crowds at a slum where 800,000 people live in a 1.5 mile radius. He visited his paternal grandmother with his wife and daughters. While there, he and his wife took a highly publicized AIDS test at a mobile clinic to encourage local couples to do the same.
He went to South Africa, where he spoke against the government's misinformation about AIDS/HIV and visited the prison where Nelson Mandela was jailed. He also went to Chad to hear stories from refugees of Darfur, where his English questions needed to be first translated to French, before being translated again to Arabic for the refugee women to answer. Everywhere he went, his presence pulled thousands -- if not tens of thousands -- of locals. It's a shameless cliche to say the film was inspiring, but guess what: it was inspiring. And it was a perspective of Africa we don't often see. One where the people are hopeful and happy and in the streets cheering.
After the brief screening, the film's Chicago-based producers, Bob Hercules and Keith Walker, stepped up to answer questions.
Here are some highlights from the Q&A:
- One of the first things the producers said was the Obama presidential campaign didn't have anything to do with the film, funding or otherwise. In fact, the two men only had about $50,000 in private funding, which was just enough to cover the travel expenses for the two of them, a camera guy and a sound guy. The producers had to pay for everything else out of their own pockets -- including the music, the stock footage, the production, and a $1,000 bribe when they touched down in Kenya so they could have their camera equipment unloaded. (Bob Hercules said they later got their money back after the Kenyan president intervened.)
- Even with all the press Obama gets on the campaign trail, the producers said the film doesn't get much coverage in the mainstream media. "No one wants to touch it," they said, due to equal time for press coverage of candidates. They've been turned down by all the TV channels, though they believe they shouldn't have a problem finding a channel to screen it after the election. (This would explain why it's only 52 minutes.)
- Ironically, the film hasn't had any trouble finding an international audience, having already sold to nine foreign countries, including Australia and two distributors in France. The Obama people have also bought some footage to include in campaign ads.
- There was a CBS journalist in the audience too, who piped in with his own stories of traveling with the Obama posse in Africa. I missed his name, but just did some Googling and it was probably Mike Flannery, the political editor from CBS 2. I would definitely recognize his voice though. He has a deep, booming voice and enjoyed dropping extended beats into his stories. He wrote some blog entries here about his own experience, including this one from August 26, 2006:
Ha.
"There is, of course, some talk of Obama running for President back in the U.S.A. (something he still says he has no intention of doing.) Were he to run, it would be a battle royale. But Kenya has a presidential election coming up, too. Based on what I've seen in the past week, if Obama ran HERE, he might just win by acclamation."
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