Robert Greenwald

A longtime director and executive producer in features and television turned unabashedly left-leaning documentary filmmaker, Robert Greenwald made provocative, hard-hitting films to rival the likes of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. Unlike his counterparts, however, Greenwald eschewed in-your-face confrontations to focus on more straight-forward narratives and by using stock footage and subject interviews. Whether deriding the corporate practices of the nation's largest retail chain or using footage from a particular cable network to detail routine distortion of the news, Greenwald managed to stoke the fires of political debate by informing rather than entertaining. In accordance with his activist nature, Greenwald was not resigned to submitting his film to festivals in hopes of picking up distribution. He instead used MoveOn.org and other new media sources to distribute his movies directly to fans without using studios or theaters. Greenwald went even further, appealing directly to audiences to help fund his projects - a revolutionary and unheard of means of filmmaking that allowed him to make movies audiences truly wanted to see.