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The Center for Social Media recently published a report on how documentary filmmakers are using new tools to reach out to the public on the causes their films address. The report by Barbara Abrash, “Social Issue Documentary:  The Evolution of Public Engagement,” lauds the creators of State of Fear among others,  for how they’ve used innovative technologies to engage their audience.

Skylight’s excellent film about Perú‘s healing after years of devastation by terrorists, both the Shining Path and the state-supported terrorism on the part of the Fujimori government, is subtitled “The Truth about Terrorism.” The film has struck a nerve with audiences all around the world (it was broadcast in over 150 countries), but perhaps no where as strongly as with Peruvians themselves.

While Skylight fully engages the world with social media and things like good old face to face outreach meetings (incredible to be a part of), the EDMQuechua (Estado de Miedo) project brought State of Fear to the Peruvian interior where the Quechua language dominates. Paco de Onís, Skylight’s producer, sent out a bunch of easy to use Flip video cameras to human rights workers in Perú and had them film testimonials at screenings.

For our part of the project, Sonnet Media built a micro-Website to locate screening information on Google maps, pull in news feeds from the trial of Fujimori (which got underway about the same time), photos from screenings and most importantly video and written testimony from those at the screenings. Technically speaking, we created a simple form for users to submit their videos or commentary, all of which became part of our database for use on the site.

It’s a great pleasure to work with a group of people who not only change the world, but also who embrace new means to engage their audience, putting social media to great use. In fact, embrace puts it lightly; Paco drives the use of social media and Skylight Pictures as a whole pushes every tool at their disposal to make their message heard. We’ve been consulting on their latest audience engagement project, IJCentral, and will have more to report on that soon.