Brave New Films is a media company founded by filmmaker Robert Greenwald

Robert Greenwald

Robert Greenwald is an American film director, film producer, and political activist.-Early life:Greenwald was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ruth and Harold Greenwald. He attended the city's High School of Performing Arts...

. Viral videos produced by Brave New Films have been widely circulated on the internet, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign

United States presidential election, 2008

The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

, and generally disparage Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 candidate John McCain

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

 and other prominent conservatives.

History and operations

Greenwald first moved from producing full-length films to making online videos in fall 2006, after analyzing YouTube and judging it to be a largely untapped opportunity for disseminating political videos. In 2007, Brave New Films began to release videos in the series "The REAL Rudy

The REAL Rudy

The REAL Rudy is a series of four viral videos by documentary film director and activist Robert Greenwald.The videos criticize former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's preparedness for, and handling of, the September 11, 2001 attacks. They were released on September 4 and September 6, 2007. ...

," which criticized former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani

Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....

 before the 2008 Republican Primary

Republican Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008

The 2008 Republican presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Republican Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 U.S. presidential election...

, and "Fox Attacks

Fox Attacks: Decency

Fox Attacks: Decency is a 2007 viral video produced by Robert Greenwald, a political documentary director. It was produced by Brave New Films.It attacks what it asserts is Fox News' gratuitous use of sexual images and topics on its shows...

," which criticized Fox News Channel

Fox News Channel

Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...

 for its unfair treatment of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 and coverage of sexual controversies, among other things. When John McCain announced his intention to run for president, Brave New Films began to focus on him with its "The Real McCain" series.

In June 2008 Brave New Films was reported to have a staff of about 20 paid workers; by September its staff had grown to about 40. The company makes most of its money through donations and fundraisers. The New York Times has reported that the company had a budget of about $900,000 from donations as of June 2008. Greenwald himself does not take a salary.

Brave New Films has its own channel on YouTube with almost 20,000 subscribers, and the company's own staff heavily promote videos by recommending them to bloggers and the mainstream media. Videos are also spread through e-mail. The videos often also include petitions addressed to the media or the government, which viewers are encouraged to sign.

Though best known for its online videos, the company does operate in other mediums as well. In October 2008, for example, it ran a paper advertisement in The New York Times, calling for presidential candidate John McCain to release his health records. It has also produced several full-length films, including Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is a 2005 documentary film by director Robert Greenwald. The film presents an unfavorable picture of Wal-Mart's business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Wal-Mart executives...

(2005) and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is a 2006 documentary film made by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films about the ongoing Iraq War and the behavior of companies with no-bid contracts working in Iraq....

(2006). The company collaborated with documentary filmmaker Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

 to distribute his film Slacker Uprising

Slacker Uprising

Slacker Uprising is a movie of Michael Moore's tour of colleges in swing states during the 2004 election, with a goal to encourage 18–29 year olds to vote, and the response it received...

online.

On November 23, 2009, the company celebrated its 5th Anniversary with the release of a 10-DVD boxset containing basically every documentary produced by the organization.

Brave New Films has also released a pair of television series entitled ACLU Freedom Files and The Sierra Club Chronicles. Brave New Films has recently formed a partnership with The Young Turks

The Young Turks (talk show)

The Young Turks is a progressive Internet talk show via live web stream and YouTube, and starting in late 2011, a weeknight news and political commentary program airing on Current TV. It was Sirius Satellite Radio's first original talk programming. The Young Turks claims to be the first Internet...

and GritTV to provide live coverage of political events via streaming video.

2008 presidential campaign

Brave New Films has become known for its anti-McCain videos in the "The Real McCain" series, many of which show montages of ostensibly self-contradictory comments by the senator. One of the first Brave New Films viral videos, a short piece criticizing Senator McCain for his praise of evangelical leader Rod Parsley

Rod Parsley

Rodney Lee Parsley is a prominent American Christian minister, author, television host and evangelist. He is senior pastor of World Harvest Church, a large Pentecostal church in Columbus, Ohio and founder and president of The Center for Moral Clarity, a right-wing Christian grassroots advocacy...

, had a direct impact on the campaign, leading McCain to distance himself from Parsley. Another video has been credited as playing a role in sparking a "media blow-up" over the number of houses McCain was said to own.

Reception

The company has been criticized by popular conservative website Hot Air

Hot air

Hot air in economics refers to the Assigned Amount Units credits given for the reduction of Green House Gas emissions among the former Soviet Bloc countries since 1990....

, which called Greenwald a "propagandist." It has also received complaints from representatives of talk show host Michael Savage

Michael Savage (commentator)

Michael Savage is a conservative American radio host, author, and political commentator. He is the host of The Savage Nation, a nationally syndicated talk show that airs throughout the United States on Talk Radio Network...

, who in October 2008 accused Brave New Films of infringing on copyright with its use of clips from Savage's show and asked YouTube to remove the video from Brave New Films' channel.

On the other hand, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

has cited Brave New Films as an example of the growing influence the Internet is having in American politics. As of October 2008, Brave New Films has produced as many as 300 videos, which have accumulated millions of views on sites such as YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

.