It’s funny how life cycles, isn’t it? One day Bush, the next Obama. One day love and sunshine, the next rain and sorrow. Money, no money. I’ve very much been in a period of waning on my blog, but the doc days are heating up and so too must my little project here, or be I doomed back too obscurity!!

Through several channels has The Way We Get By by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly come to me. If you click to their website, you can see they are consummate internet marketers. I have to say that is about as technologically advanced as a film website can be these days – especially after all, they just premiered at SXSW where they won an Special Jury Award. They clearly have their ducks in a row, as the other channel that the film came through on was the P.O.V. press release as it will be on late in the upcoming season.

A prize at SXSW and a slot on P.O.V. plus their outstanding website are about as good of a pedigree for a documentary as you get these days. A lot of people believe in this film. The filmmakers shared a screener with me so of course, I watched it. It would take a hard heart indeed to not be taken in by the folks who are the focus of this film.

Can you imagine a convicted killer walking away from a minimum security prison in this day and age? I know times are crazy, but our nation’s continued obsession with locking people up and throwing away the key, makes the idea of prison escape pretty unbelievable, particularly for a murderer. But, walk away from prison is exactly what Norman Porter did after having served 25 years of his sentence as an exemplary prisoner. After his escape, he reinvented himself as a poet, handyman and church-goer in Chicago under an assumed name. In 2005, he was re-captured after 20 years of freedom.

Killer Poet by Susan Gray, which won Best Documentary at this year’s Boston International Film Festival, delves into Porter’s story with testimony from Porter himself, to the family members of his victims, to the police who have been involved in his case over the years, to the lives he touched in a positive way while he was living in Chicago. The central question of the film is can a person change from a thieving murderer to model citizen? The best part of the movie is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions.

I’m sure that the title, Senator Obama Goes to Africa, is intended to invoke if not the letter, the spirit, of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. After all, if he’s “going,” then it’s “Obama Goes to Washington,” and as it so happens, he goes by way of Africa. The doc feels like a bunch of YouTube clips strung together into a movie, but as an Obama supporter, I have to say, I find value in that. There are critics of Obama that attack his class and color. Those are meaningless measures of a man, except wherein they shape his point of view. I think this movie could help people who are skeptical of him to see him in a new light.

To watch Obama in Kenya, where his father was from and where his sister and grandmother still live (I’m wondering how many wives his father had?), is to see a fish to water. He identifies with the people so fully. He understands the history of their country and where they are today. He is empathetic in a way that few American presidents have shown for any people, let alone Africans. He displays a JFK aura as he addresses huge crowds who have come out for a glimpse of this Son of Kenya who has made good, and then taken the time to come home and sit with his countrymen to try to understand their needs. He says openly that he wants to shape American foreign policy so that it furthers the goals of these countries (he also visits South Africa and a Darfur refugee camp), instead of keeping them under the proverbial American thumb or worse, not caring enough to even address the issues.

We all saw the image of 200,000 Germans filling Tiergarten Park in Berlin to see Obama. What about an entire shanty town in Kenya? Can you imagine that everywhere this man goes, people greet him as though he is some kind of savior? This is some serious shit. Truth be told, I’m worried for him. Men who display this kind of power to connect have often been targets of assassins, but I hope that won’t be the case. I’m voting for Obama, and while this movie wasn’t the tipping point for me, maybe it will be for you.

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Thanks to First Run Features for allowing embeddable video! Excellent choice.