Anti-Obama Movie Mailed To 1 Million Ohioians

The film claiming President Obama's true father is a Chicago Communist is being distributed for free all over the country.

An anti-Obama movie claiming — without evidence — that President Barack Obama's real father is an obscure African-American communist has been mailed to 1.5 million voters across the country, its creator told BuzzFeed Friday.

A reader in Ohio emailed this photo of his free copy of the film Dreams From My Real Father, which claims that the Chicago activist Frank Marshall Davis is actually President Obama's father. He received it in the mail this week.

The film's director and producer, Joel Gilbert, said that the film was sent out to more one million voters in Ohio; 200,000 after a mid-summer conference, and a million after that. He said that 50,000 copies had been sent to voters in Nevada and 100,000 to voters in New Hampshire.

"We're sending out bulk mailings to many states," Gilbert said. "Probably Illinois, New York, Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, we'll hit every state if we can to stimulate and force the national media to cover the story."

Gilbert declined to say how much his company, Highway 61 Entertainment, is spending to distribute the film for free, but said that the film was making a profit through online orders. He also wouldn't say how the company is funded and how they come up with the money to distribute so many free disks.

"We’re a private media company, a journalistic company that’s privately held and we don’t disclose the nature or makeup of our finances," he said.

He said "We’ve made 12 successful films and we are also making current revenue on the current film" and compared the company to Citizens United, but said that it wasn't a political group and didn't have donors.

Davis, who lived part of his life in Hawaii, features in Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, as an old man. The notion that he could have been Obama's father — and thus that Obama's roots are in actual Communism — has been one of several variants of theories of Obama's parentage that thrive online without any documentary support.

Gilbert said that he had offered USA Today $90,000 for a full page ad and was told no (he also claimed that he had tried to place full-page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post). He did manage to get a full-page ad in the New York Post.

"I think it’s the story of the century," Gilbert said of his film. "Any one of these journalists could win a Pulitzer Prize if they covered it."

This story has been updated with a quote from Gilbert about how his company is funded.

Skip to footer