Filmmaker and activist Drew Emery, creator of the film Inlaws & Outlaws, this week sent out a graceful Thanksgiving-season email to the film's mailing list acknowledging all the people who have helped get the film screened throughout the country.

So we give thanks to Pastor Dan Shelly of the Ravenna UMC who hosted the very first Hearts + Minds screening in May. He wanted everyone to know that his congregation was open and affirming.  And the latest was Friday in Des Moines. Clare Elizabeth decided that if her church was going to become open and affirming, they needed to see the film.  

Thank you Heathcliff Lopez at the University of Texas at Brownsville.  You organized the first LGBT event on your campus around Inlaws & Outlaws.  Bravo!

Thank you Cowlitz County PFLAG.  You partnered with a local church and a theatre and had the biggest local LGBT event ever -- raising money for your Safe Schools Coalition. Now the theatre wants us back!

There are many more, including Dan Funk of the Indiana Coalition on Non-Discrimination (ICON) who arranged for five screening so far in Indiana.

And all of that is what makes Emery both an activist and a filmmaker. He not on only created a documentary, but also created a marketing machine called the Hearts + Minds Campaign to promote the film and -- even more important -- the film's message of tolerance.

Except in rare circumstances -- like having someone who was once elected President narrate one of them -- documentaries on film don't attract much of an audience. Without some kind of extra marketing push, a documentary like Emery's would likely have been seen on the festival circuit, but not very far beyond that.

Emery insists that Inlaws & Outlaws is about marriage. Period. Just about marriage. Not gay marriage. Not straight marriage. "It took people a while to get it," Emory says in a short film on the website explaining the genesis of the Hearts + Minds Campaign. "It took people a while to get that this was about a common experience, a shared experience, not a what-if experience. We all understand, to some degree what marriage means, but how often do we sit down and talk about love?"

Emery found a way to overcome the limited potential audience for his film, and in doing so, has allowed a couple of thousand extra people to share the experience of his film and to "sit down and talk about love." It isn't a message about love and marriage that much of his audience would  have heard elsewhere.

The campaign is explained on the film's comprehensive website:

We developed the Hearts + Minds Campaign so that you can share Inlaws & Outlaws with your congregation, school or community.

We'll provide the tools and materials necessary for you to use the film to educate, advocate, raise money, or have a great night at the movies.

Using his medium -- film -- Emery explains the campaign in a short online video on the website. He explains:

After the film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival, the one thing I wasn't not prepared for is to have unsolicited emails from all sorts of organizations across the country that were interested in taking this film and using it for their purposes. We've developed Hearts and Minds Campaign to empower individuals and organizations to take Inlaws & Outlaws to educate, to advocate, to fundraise, and to create dialogue about a very important issue in our times.

It's a unique and admirable form of activism that combines art and marketing to make an important social and political statement.