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- Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is now streaming on Showmax.
- The three-part HBO documentary series scored 91% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
- The release of the documentary series coincided with former president's 60th birthday on 4 August.
Now streaming on Showmax, Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union chronicles the personal and political journey of President Barack Obama as America grapples with its racial history.
Directed by seven-time Emmy winner Peter Kunhardt and executive produced by The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb, the three-part HBO docuseries has a 91% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with RogerEbert.com calling it "a comprehensive and compelling analysis...Kunhardt's film brightly illuminates how essential the discussion of Obama's handling of race is to American culture as a whole, especially when it was no accident that every president before him was a white man."
Timed to coincide with the former president's 60th birthday, Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union features the likes of politician Jesse Jackson, professors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, political consultant David Axelrod, authors Michael Eric Dyson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, reverends Alvin Love and Jeremiah Wright, New Yorker editor David Remnick, speechwriter Jon Favreau and journalists Laura Washington and Michele Norris.
Interspersed with his own speeches and news interviews, the series begins with Obama's childhood and takes us through his perspective as the son of a white mother from Kansas and an African father, his spiritual formation by a generation of Black leaders, and his hopes for a more inclusive America.
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:
But, as Los Angeles Times says: "HBO's new documentary goes places the Obama media machine might not have... It ultimately sets itself apart by taking a deeper look at the multitude of issues that surfaced after America finally chose its first Black president."
Here are some of the most quotable quotes from the documentary:
"Now, you've got a Black man in that White House built primarily by Black slaves. That's a moment that I think all of us of all colours would feel very, very deeply. I'll never forget that as long as I live." Professor Cornel West
"I don't think that there was any way possible for Barack Obama as president to ever come up to the expectation of the African-American community because they expected him really to undo four hundred years of injustice with the stroke of a pen." Reverend Alvin Love
"White supremacy is in the DNA of the American people. And the myth of a post-racial America because of the election of a Black man to the White House let us unfortunately put our guard down." Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
"When you study history, every time we made a step forward, there was always a backlash. We go from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation into Reconstruction. Ku Klux Klan. White Citizens Council. Backlash. Supreme Court decisions; backlash. Turn of the century, NAACP is formed; backlash. Lynchings. All the way up through the Civil Rights Movement. It was naive for us to think there wouldn't be a backlash to the first Black president." Reverend Al Sharpton
"When a president retires after two terms, that president sets the stage for the next In the sense that the country never looks, no matter how popular the president is, for the replica of what they have. They generally look for the remedy. By that measure, there's no one who's a greater antithesis to Barack Obama than Donald Trump." Political consultant David Axelrod
"There are now white children, whose earliest memories of any sort of President is a Black guy. I don't think that's small. I don't think that's small at all. Because I think your ability to imagine who can occupy the highest levels in society directly informs your ability to see people as human." Author Ta-Nehisi Coates
Stream Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union on Showmax now
