Brave New Films (BNF) is a nonprofit film company based in Culver City, California. [1] [2] Founded by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, BNF produces feature-length documentaries and investigative videos that seek "to educate, influence and empower viewers to take action around issues that matter." [3]
In 2001, Robert Greenwald was a respected film producer and director with nearly three decades of socially conscious television and theatrical credits. [4] After 11 September, he decided to turn his efforts to documentary filmmaking. [5] 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. [6]
Unprecedented was shown in theaters around the country, on cable TV, and made the round of film festivals, bringing home 11 awards. [7] But Greenwald saw opportunities for higher viewership with experimental marketing models. [6] He teamed with former dot-com exec Jim Gilliam to create a distribution model [8] for his next short documentary – Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004). [6] 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. [6] The multi-organizational partnership model would become a keystone of Greenwald’s filmmaking approach. [9]
The new strategy was successful beyond Greenwald’s expectations. The first two days Unprecedented was available, more than 23,000 people requested copies. [6] 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. [10]
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. [11] Outfoxed used extensive clips from Fox News under the doctrine of fair use, which allows limited use of copyrighted material for parody or criticism. [6] [12] 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. [9]
After Outfoxed "put Greenwald on the mainstream documentary map," [13] he officially registered Brave New Films as a 501(c)4 charity. [3] [8] 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, [14] BNF invited 1500 volunteers across the country to shoot footage of their local Walmarts for the film. [9] 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, [8] in 2004 – 2 years before the word crowdfunding was coined [15] and 5 years before Kickstarter launched. [16]
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." [17]
BNF was growing and changing in parallel with the social media explosion on the Internet. [17] New sites like YouTube, Facebook and Hulu had profound impact on their evolving production and distribution models. [14] BNF started a YouTube channel [18] 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. [19] At the same time, BNF was developing their multimedia approach to include blogs, websites, petitions, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts with millions of followers. [20]
In 2008, BNF took on presidential candidate John McCain with The Real McCain series of short videos. [18] McCain found himself forced to respond to embarrassing questions about how many homes he owned [21] – a serious issue amidst a historic housing crisis – as well as his spiritual leaders [22] and his health, [23] among other topics. The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Greenwald shows how technology has dispersed the power to shape campaign narratives, potentially upending the way American presidential campaigns are fought." [5]
Greenwald and BNF returned to long-form documentary with Rethink Afghanistan (2009). However, there was a twist: in order to address a fast-changing topic in a timely way, the film was released in six on-line segments, in "real time" over 2008 and 2009. [24]
In 2010, BNF launched one of its most successful multimedia campaigns, Cuentame, which addresses Latino issues, worker rights and immigration reform. [25] Beyond Bars is another touchstone campaign, that works on the issue of mass incarceration in the US. [26] The Koch Brothers Exposed (2012) film and campaign built awareness of the right-wing billionaires’ influence on US government and industry. [27] Under the umbrella of another campaign, War Costs, BNF produced two full-length films, War on Whistleblowers (2013) and Unmanned: America's Drone Wars (2013). For Unmanned, BNF brought drone strike survivors to Washington, and for the first time, congresspeople heard eyewitness testimony from civilians on the ground in Pakistan. [28]
Brave New Films is notable for both its innovations in documentary production and distribution models; and for the practical impact of its films and campaigns. [20] Its first films "demonstrated to the rest of us [documentary filmmakers] that there was a new way of marketing a documentary." [6] "By employing distribution strategies based on the Internet and the Internet’s ability to support ‘user generated content,’ to bring his films to mass audiences, Greenwald became arguably, the most influential political documentary maker working in the U.S. and a political entrepreneur with national reach." [10]
The full-length documentaries, short subjects and viral videos produced by Brave New Films have been seen tens of millions of times, across the globe, "which in many cases, amped up debate, raised consciousness, and produced some of the change we have been waiting for." [20] Its work has been covered by mainstream media including New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, Time magazine, and The Huffington Post, among others, with a worldwide media reach of billions. [29]
Brave New Films’ work "challenge(s) the political discourses of some of the most powerful figures and institutions in U.S. society, including a sitting president and his administration." [10] Examples of such impact include: The Walmart film forced the largest company in the world to curtail its expansionism. [30] Iraq for Sale and Unmanned both triggered congressional hearings, and have been influential in changing public discourse about the U.S. war efforts. [31] [32]
Brave New Films has earned the ire of political conservatives, who have called the films "agitation and propaganda." But even critics admit "The way [Greenwald] edits and posts his videos online and urges his viewers to take action is innovative and creative." [3]
John Sidney McCain III was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a U.S. senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the Republican Party's nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
An unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), also known as a combat drone, fighter drone or battlefield UAV, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is used for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance and carries aircraft ordnance such as missiles, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), and/or bombs in hardpoints for drone strikes. These drones are usually under real-time human control, with varying levels of autonomy. UCAVs are used for reconnaissance, attacking targets and returning to base; unlike kamikaze drones which are only made to explode on impact, or surveillance drones which are only for gathering intelligence.
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American to be elected to the presidency. This was the first election since 1952 in which neither the incumbent president nor vice president was on the ballot, as well as the first election since 1928 in which neither ran for the nomination.
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a 2004 documentary film by filmmaker Robert Greenwald about Fox News Channel's and its owner's, Rupert Murdoch, promotion of conservative views. The film says this bias belies the channel's motto of being "Fair and Balanced".
Robert Greenwald is an American filmmaker, and the founder of Brave New Films, a nonprofit film and advocacy organization whose work is distributed for free in concert with nonprofit partners and movements in order to educate and mobilize for progressive causes. With Brave New Films, Greenwald has made investigative documentaries such as Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004), Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004), Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006), Rethink Afghanistan (2009), Koch Brothers Exposed (2012), and War on Whistleblowers (2013), Suppressed 2020: The Fight to Vote (2020), Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote (2022), Beyond Bars: A Son's Fight for Justice (2022) as well as many short investigative films and internet videos.
Third Cinema is a Latin American film movement that started in the 1960s–70s which decries neocolonialism, the capitalist system, and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment to make money. The term was coined in the manifesto Hacia un tercer cine, written in the late 1960s by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, members of the Grupo Cine Liberación and published in 1969 in the journal Tricontinental by the OSPAAAL.
The Disinformation Company was a privately held, limited American publishing company until 2012 when it was sold to Red Wheel/Weiser/Conari. It also owned Disinformation Books, which focused on current affairs titles and books exposing alleged conspiracy theories, occultism, politics, news oddities, and purported disinformation. It was headquartered in New York City, New York. Arguably, its most visible publications to date are 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know and the Everything You Know About [subject] Is Wrong series, both by the company's editor-at-large Russ Kick.
Pratap Chatterjee is an Indian/Sri Lankan investigative journalist and progressive author. He is a British citizen and grew up in India, although he lived in California for many years. He serves as the executive director of CorpWatch, an Oakland-based corporate accountability organisation. He also works for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. He writes regularly for The Guardian and serves on the board of Amnesty International USA and of the Corporate Europe Observatory
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is a 2005 documentary film by director Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films about the American multinational corporation and retail conglomerate Walmart. The film presents a negative picture of Walmart's business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Walmart executives. Greenwald also uses statistics interspersed between interview footage, to provide an objective analysis of the effects Walmart has on individuals and communities.
Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election is a 2002 47-minute documentary directed and co-written by Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler, and narrated by Peter Coyote, about the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida.
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is a 2006 documentary film made by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films. Produced while the Iraq War was in full swing, the film deals with the alleged war profiteering and negligence of private contractors and consultants who went to Iraq as part of the US war effort.
Jeremy Scahill is an American activist, author, and investigative journalist. He is a founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), which won the George Polk Book Award. His book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (2013) was adapted into a documentary film which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In July 2024, he left The Intercept and, together with Ryan Grim and Nausicaa Renner, founded Drop Site News.
Richard Ray Perez is an American documentary film producer and director. His productions include Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election, a political documentary. Perez is the co-executive producer of the second season of The Freedom Files, which examines the impact civil liberties violations can have on people's daily lives.
Rethink Afghanistan is a 2009 documentary by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, about the US military presence in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Jemima Marcelle Goldsmith, known professionally by her former married name Jemima Khan, is an English journalist and screenwriter. She is the founder of Instinct Productions, a television production company. As a journalist, she was an associate editor for the British political and cultural magazine The New Statesman and European editor-at-large for the American magazine Vanity Fair.
John Harrison Nichols is a liberal and progressive American journalist and author. He is the National Affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times. Books authored or co-authored by Nichols include The Genius of Impeachment and The Death and Life of American Journalism.
Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a 2004 documentary film directed by Steven Grandison and Greg Palast. The film, which examines various aspects of the presidency of George W. Bush, including the 2000 US presidential election and the Iraq War, is adapted from the 2003 BBC production Bush Family Fortunes and based on the 2002 book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by investigative journalist Palast, who had spent years tracking the Bush family for the BBC and The Guardian newspaper. The research for the original BBC film, which claims to have exposed the George W. Bush military service controversy, was also drawn upon by Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and footage was used by Robert Greenwald in Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002).
Koch Brothers Exposed is a 2012 U.S. documentary, compiled by filmmaker Robert Greenwald from a viral video campaign produced by Brave New Films, about the political activities of the Koch brothers.
Unmanned: America's Drone Wars is a feature-length documentary film released by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films in October, 2013, investigating the impact of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
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