A Closer Walk: A Film That Will Truly Change You.

Kansas City Star movie editor Robert W. Butler reviewed the March 31st free screenings of “A Closer Walk” on the Extreme Screen at Union Station, calling the film “one of the most artful, heartrending and inspirational documentaries I’ve ever seen.”

Butler writes, “After 30 years in this business, red flags go up for me whenever someone claims a movie is a life-changing experience…So it is with sheepishness and not a little happy amazement that I can report having seen a film with the potential to actually change lives.”

The real power of the film, Butler notes, is in the way its filmmaker, Robert Bilheimer, understands human psychology. “…that very human tendency to turn away from something ugly and disturbing – to lose ourselves in some brain-numbing amusement – is precisely what Bilheimer is targeting here.

“There is some shocking, horrifying stuff on display here. Skeletal African children too exhausted to do much more than blink. Russian junkies shooting up with syringes practically teeming with the virus. But Bilheimer is never exploitative. And once you start watching this film…you’ll find that it is an incredibly beautiful movie. Superb cinematography. Poetic editing. Haunting music.

“But the central argument of “A Closer Walk” is that the AIDS epidemic – undoubtedly the worst plague mankind has ever knows, constitutes a test of our collective humanity. Do we embrace the good and selfless part of our natures? Or do we shrug and go channel surfing?”

Butler writes that although “A Closer Walk” is about the HIV disease, it is aiming for an even bigger canvas. “The film argues that basic human rights – including the right to medical care and the right to an essential dignity – are imperiled by the rise of AIDS. In fact, the disease will affect every aspect of our lives.”

Butler made special note of the film’s inclusion of segments on the Kansas City Free Health Clinic and a sermon by the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver on the devastating remembrance of a cousin who died of AIDS as feeding perfectly into the movie’s theme of personal responsibility.

The Kansas City screenings were sponsored by Worldwide Documentaries, the Morgan Family Foundation, the James B. Nutter family and the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee.