Last night while having dinner, my boyfriend Asher and I were talking about the Indiepix.net distribution model and how unorthodox and empowering it is to filmmakers. I am also a documentary filmmaker, making a documentary called Island to Island: Returning Home From Rikers . As I was saying to my boyfriend, no documentary filmmaker, particularly one with a larger social issue he/she is spotlighting, goes into the process of making the film expecting to make money. In fact, we usually are aware we are going to LOSE lots of money in the process. So why do it? We have a need to tell a certain story, to make people aware of an issue. That said, the best way to reach the most amount of people is NOT to have a theatrical release, where only those in the know in the few cities with art cinemas in America will skee out and see a film, but to find a way to bring it to audiences everywhere from Union Square to Union Street in Juneau, Alaska! (Assuming that exists). The point is, I would LOVE it if my documentary got on PBS and reached tens of millions of viewers all over the country. Even that is only reaching a certain audience though, because of the high-brow, upper-crust connotations of the channel. Not so many Wonder Bread eating midwestern secretaries are tuning into P.O.V. every month! What we are trying to do at Indiepix.net is get those people to come to our site, to connect with independent films. It is idealistic, yes. Is it possible? Definitely! So anyway, today, my boyfriend alerted me about an interview with the director of Walmart:The High Cost of Low Price . His name is Robert Greenwald , and he also directed the film Outfoxed: Rubert Murdoch’s War on Journalism , with which he pioneered the idea of viral audience building through house party events. In the interview, posted on Alternet , Greenwald discusses his unique distribution strategy:

Q: You’ve chosen an unorthodox distribution strategy for “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” — forgoing theatrical release and instead screening the film at house parties and community centers. What about this formula works for this kind of film?

A: I like going to the movies. I like having popcorn. But if your goal is to create social change, it’s not even a question that this is the way to go. Let’s think about it for a minute. You go to the movies, you have to spend $10. What are the chances you’re going to get someone to go to a movie on a subject they don’t care about, or they disagree with you on? Very, very slim.

However, if it’s on at your church, or your neighbor invites you over for a drink and shows the DVD, or if it’s at your student union hall or your bowling alley, it’s an entirely different thing. Everyone has a friend who disagrees with them politically, everyone has relatives they fight with all the time, people they argue with at work…these are the kinds of people we are reaching with this kind of campaign.

With “Outfoxed,” we reached an enormous amount of people — never in my wildest dreams did I imagine how many people we would end up reaching this way.

What I am trying to do, in my role as Documentary Film Coordinator for Indiepix, is put together packages that help filmmakers do this sort of outreach with their films. A film that we are about to sell on the site, Matt Kohn’s Call It Democracy will be the perfect film to do this with. The film is about the super-problematic electoral process in this country, and the urgent need for its reform. We intend to screen for advocacy groups, community groups, political parties, schools — whereever we feel there is a need — to get this issue front and center, where it belongs! And of course, sell the DVD through Indiepix!