Impact of ‘2016’ on 2012 presidential race uncertain

But anti-Obama documentary a box-office hit

I know this is really late, and I should have added this sometime around November of 2012,  but I had not seen it and I had to wait until  I could find it to download and add it. I found it full of misinformation, lies, and supposition.  The way Mr D'Souza, weaved his story and tried to make you believe that Obama's father had influence that was so much more than it was. Obama did not know him  A father who only saw him once in his entire life.

It was dull, flat and uninspiring. It looked pieced together, and brother it was boring. D'Souza made you believe, that Obama had salacious plans to do our country wrong.  The movie was a let down totally.....thank goodness and did not influence voters.
Movie itself is at bottom of this post......

By Valerie Richardson

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The Washington Times

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Early in the 2012 campaign season, predictions were that a major film would reach theaters in the fall, shine a spotlight on one of the presidential candidates, and possibly influence the outcome of the election.

And that's how it happened, except the movie wasn't "Zero Dark Thirty," the surefire Hollywood blockbuster about the killing of Osama bin Laden that Republicans feared would throw the election to President Obama. That film is now slated for wide release Dec. 19.

Instead, the movie at the center of this year's presidential race is "2016: Obama's America," an upstart independent documentary by conservative author Dinesh D'Souza that has stunned the filmmaking world with its success.

As of last weekend, "2016" had grossed more than $30 million, making it the second-highest-grossing political documentary and fifth-highest documentary of all time. It appears poised to climb still higher, given that it continues to play on 1,876 screens after opening in wide release Aug. 24, according to Box Office Mojo.

While conservative filmmakers have a long way to go before they rule Hollywood, they've become a force to be reckoned with on the documentary side. Dozens of serious documentaries from the right have burst onto the scene in the past decade and, while most have gone straight to DVD, they've achieved a rough parity with their brethren on the left.

"In terms of what's being produced and released, there is far more ideological balance in documentary films," said Michael Medved, the former film critic turned conservative author and radio host.

Mr. D'Souza sees a simple reason for the success of "2016."

"There is a hunger for information about Obama," he said. "Americans feel that they don't have the full story and the film supplies the missing pieces."

What distinguishes "2016" is its blue-chip bona fides. The film's producer is Gerald Molen, the Academy Award-winning producer behind "Schindler's List" and "Jurassic Park," who gave "2016" the kind of insider clout that most conservative documentaries lack.

"You have two things different here: One is the credibility of Gerald Molen, and, two, they spent a boatload on advertising," Mr. Medved said. "They probably spent more on advertising the film than producing it. There have always been these attempts to break through, but this one really did it."

The film centers on Mr. D'Souza's search for the president's "compass" by examining the president's childhood and relationship with his largely absent Kenyan father. He concludes that Mr. Obama has been heavily influenced by anti-colonialist views that he would have absorbed in Indonesia and Hawaii, and from his father, a leftist academic.

Other conservative filmmakers are hoping the success of "2016" opens doors for them with distributors and theaters. Certainly there is no shortage of such films in the pipeline: On Tuesday, Citizens United released, "The Hope and the Change," another film critical of Mr. Obama, on six cable channels and six broadcast networks, and plans to issue a second documentary, "Occupy Unmasked," in limited release Friday.

Conservatives say they have one man to thank: Michael Moore, who hit it big with a string of liberal documentaries beginning in the 1990s and culminating in 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which made more than $119 million and remains the highest-grossing political documentary of all time.

David Bossie, president of Citizens United, credits the success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" with compelling him to go into show business.

"When I called around Washington, D.C., in 2004, 'How do we respond to this?' 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was a 90-minute attack piece on George Bush," said Mr. Bossie. "My thought was, 'My gosh, we have to respond to this,' but nobody I called knew how to make a movie."

Mr. Bossie ended up connecting with a couple of Hollywood conservatives, actor Ron Silver and screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd, and released "Celsius 41.11: The Truth Behind the Lies of 'Fahrenheit 9/11'" in 2004. The documentary did well enough that Mr. Bossie went on to make "Hillary: The Movie" in 2007 about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, which became the basis for the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission.

Don't expect "2016: Obama's America" to change that trend. Only three of 14 "major critics" listed on the Rotten Tomatoes website gave the film a positive review, with reviewers describing it as everything from "a vicious, larger-than-life racist lie" to "deeply boring." On the other hand, 77 percent of moviegoers gave it a positive rating.

"There is a huge market that is not being well-served by Hollywood. If conservatives can make high quality films that are entertaining and informative then there is a lot of opportunity out there," Mr. D'Souza said.