I'm a documentary filmmaker, and I'm trying to brainstorm some DIY distribution ideas. I'm curious what your take is.

Quick backstory: In 2013 I made a personal doc called "Being Ginger." I sent it to a bunch of top-flight festivals, and they all rejected it. I did a DIY release on my web site, and toured around North America with it, including four-walling for a week in NYC and the film actually got a glowing review from The New York Times and has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes from 12 reviews. The film streamed on Netflix for two years and over 5,000 people wrote to me after watching it. I didn't make any money on it because my distributor was shady, but I know it reached a lot of people.

So, I decided to make a second film. Again, it's a personal doc called "An American Ginger In Paris." It's a stand-alone film, but it also tells the next chapter in my story. I raised $45,000 through Kickstarter thanks to fans of the first one, and I've spent five long years on it, and I think it's a better film than the first one. I sent it off to 20 film festivals, thinking that now I'm not completely unknown, they'll give me a chance. But no, it was rejected by every festival. So now I have to figure out how to get it out into the world.

I've spent the past few months emailing arthouse theaters around North America explaining everything and asking if they'll consider taking a look at the film and programming it for a single screening, and I'll fly out to do a Q&A. The key is that I don't want to rent the screen, I'm asking them to program the film and we'll split the revenue. My hope was to get 10 theaters to buy in, that would let me get some reviews, and maybe I'd four-wall in New York again, and then try to pitch it to Netflix. But I've emailed over 50 cinemas, and so far only 8 have replied to me. Of those eight, only two have actually watched it, and both of them said that they'd love to screen it, but the rest won't even reply. (One that did reply told me that they loved to work with indie filmmakers and I could rent their 500 seat screen on an off-night (Monday thru Thursday), for $5,500.)

I believe in the film, and I want it to have a life and show it to people. But I'd also like to make a living. I can release the film on my web site for $10, and I can go screen it in the two theaters that took the time to watch it, but I'm not going to reach that many people. I've considered just posting it on YouTube and linking it here. Maybe I'll get a big boost to my social media following that I can translate into a bigger crowdfunding campaign for whatever I do next. But at the same time, I fear that if I give it away for nothing, then people will assume it isn't worth anything, and whatever audience I have won't want to help me out down the line. (And Netflix certainly would never touch it.)

Anyway, what do you guys think?