Tomorrow.

REMINDER: Information about SOULMATES and the upcoming screening are found at WWW.SOULMATESMOVIE.COM.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Obama Inauguration. Like so many, I piled on the layers and squeezed onto the parade route, shivering through the delayed parade, due to Ted Kennedy's taking ill. Funny that today is the special election for his seat following his death late last year. Tomorrow will tell who replaces him.

It's also the month when a Transgendered female Amanda Simpson received an Obama appointment. You can say all you want about all the things the Obama administration hasn't done, but when an openly transgendered person can actually receive such attention, you have to admit that progress has been made, in spite of all the obstacles.

SOULMATES, likewise, deserves such attention because it got made in spite of the hurdles it faced: Funding, difficulty in securing shooting locations, casting, conflicting personnel schedules- all the usual suspects that plague any independent production.

The most interesting fact is that such a story faced the USUAL hurdles, that is, because SOULMATES was not the first movie with the transsexualism subject. However, it also came up against another unexpected hurdle. This movie had been in some stage of production for such a considerable time that, before it was completed, Many had already seen, or at least heard of, TRANSAMERICA, for which the star, the wonderful Felicity Huffman, got an Oscar nomination.

The additional hurdle faced by SOULMATES is that the public now probably thinks that everything about transsexualism that can be said has been said, just because ONE movie went big-time. For every person who has made the transition, a different story is there to be told.

SOULMATES is one such story, a true story, from our backyard, made by people we know. It doesn't cross the country to make its point. The people in it are crossing a vast amount of emotional territory, and they live to tell about it. These are so-called ordinary folks who show extraordinary strength, and remind us what is possible.