Founded by a group of young filmmakers, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs, Cinereach is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering socially relevant film. The organization makes grants to media initiatives such as the Reach Film Fellowship, which supports talented young filmmakers creating meaningful media with artistic merit.
Cinereach, a nonprofit that champions socially relevant films, wanted to boost the number of entries for its Reach Film Fellowship, a prestigious six-month program that pairs young filmmakers with grants, resources, and industry mentors.
The ideal applicant would be a recent film school grad with an interest in social causes. To get the word out to this narrow niche, PKPR developed a finely tuned social media campaign that used Twitter, Facebook, blog, and online outreach to connect with film students, social activists, and influencers in the independent film world. The results: applications for this year’s Fellowship program increased by over 100%.
PKPR�s campaign resulted in tweets from some of the most widely followed independent film voices on Twitter, including Filmmaker Magazine editor Scott Macauley, indie film guru Ted Hope, The Independent Magazine, DocuGirl, and Docs Interactive.
On Facebook, the call for applications was posted by such targeted groups as Emerson College, Future Filmmakers, Student Filmmakers, and Independent Short Filmmaking. Film schools around the country also shared the news via e-blasts and bulletin boards, including NYU, Brown, and UNC.
Meanwhile, PKPR�s blog outreach led to posts on such prominent sites as Documentary.org, the site of the International Documentary Association; Working Films; Social Edge, the Skoll Foundation�s social entrepreneur networking site, and the School of Visual Arts.
To mark the culmination of Cinereach’s 2009 Reach Film Fellowship Program, PKPR worked with New York Magazine to exclusively screen this year’s winning short film by filmmaker Brendan McQueen.
A quartet of young, socially conscious filmmakers mentored by Oscar-nominated directors like Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter) and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, Boys of Baraka) debuted their short documentaries at the first major event presented by the new non-profit Cinereach earlier this week.
PKPR helped introduce Cinereach and the filmmakers to the industry and public by placing stories in outlets like Hollywood Reporter and Filmmaker Magazine, securing an exclusive screening of one of the film’s on New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, and facilitating posts by two of the filmmakers on Huffington Post.
Held at The Gramercy Hotel Rooftoop, guest included director Mira Nair and reporters from the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Reeler, and IndieWIRE.