Brave New Films

In 2001, Robert Greenwald was a respected film producer and director with nearly three decades of socially conscious television and theatrical credits. After 11 September, he decided to turn his efforts to documentary filmmaking. He teamed up with Richard Ray Perez and Joan Sekler to create his first nonfiction film, Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002), about the controversial poll results from Florida.

Unprecedented was shown in theaters around the country, on cable TV, and made the round of film festivals, bringing home 11 awards. But Greenwald saw opportunities for higher viewership with experimental marketing models. He teamed with former dot-com exec Jim Gilliam to create a distribution model for his next short documentary – Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004). Uncovered, about the government and media push for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was distributed through the websites of influential partner organizations such as MoveOn.org, the Nation and the Center for American Progress. The multi-organizational partnership model would become a keystone of Greenwald’s filmmaking approach.

The new strategy was successful beyond Greenwald’s expectations. The first two days Unprecedented was available, more than 23,000 people requested copies. MoveOn sponsored thousands of "house parties" across the country where people could gather and watch the film. Greenwald made sure that every US Senator and Congressperson was invited to a screening.

Going forward, he and Gilliam tried new approaches to traditional production models as well. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004) took on Fox News, claiming that they have a pervasive Republican bias. Outfoxed used extensive clips from Fox News under the doctrine of fair use, which allows limited use of copyrighted material for parody or criticism. Turning standard documentary wisdom on its head, Greenwald also used his future audience as active members of his production team by inviting them to work as production researchers.

After Outfoxed "put Greenwald on the mainstream documentary map," he officially registered Brave New Films as a 501(c)4 charity. The new nonprofit went on to produce Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), using BNF’s freshly minted distribution model. In keeping with a developing philosophy of including the audience as active participants in the process, BNF invited 1500 volunteers across the country to shoot footage of their local Walmarts for the film. They also tried a new model for funding their documentary films. An email request for donations to make the movie drew $267,892 in 2 days, in 2004 – 2 years before the word crowdfunding was coined and 5 years before Kickstarter launched.

BNF continued to explore new options for distribution with Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006). In order to facilitate arranging the house party screenings that had become a hallmark of BNF, Gilliam invented Brave New Theatres, described as a mashup between "My-Space, and Evite and Moviefone."

BNF was growing and changing in parallel with the social media explosion on the Internet. New sites like YouTube, Facebook and Hulu had profound impact on their evolving production and distribution models. BNF started a YouTube channel which they populated with hundreds of short viral videos about a variety of progressive issues, including criticism of Fox News; military policy on LGBT servicemen and women; Power Without Petroleum; and much more. At the same time, BNF was developing their multimedia approach to include blogs, websites, petitions, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts with millions of followers.

In 2008, BNF took on presidential candidate John McCain with The Real McCain series of short videos. McCain found himself forced to respond to embarrassing questions about how many homes he owned – a serious issue amidst a historic housing crisis – as well as his spiritual leaders and his health,