The Sapphic Investment Film Fund (SIFF) Launches, Announces Its First Project And Calls For Projects And Investors

Wednesday, 15 December 2021, 7:03 am
Press Release: Lesflicks

The SIFF collective aims to uplift and support sapphic stories on screen

London, UK - The Sapphic Investment Film Fund (SIFF), an ambitious collaboration between Lesflicks, Splinter Pictures, and Infinite Pies Productions, has officially launched in Q4 2021. SIFF’s goal is to uplift and support queer female voices by helping facilitate the funding of sapphic-centric films and web series around the world.

SIFF aims to revolutionize the financing of queer female projects. Rather than content creators relying on self-financing, crowdfunding, or uncertain direct private investment to fund LGBT-themed projects, SIFF aims to connect these creators to individuals interested in investing in queer female visual arts projects to create successful, productive partnerships.

How SIFF will connect creators with investors:

• online speed pitching events
• online networking events
• regular newsletter
• open call outs for submissions for projects and investors
• private networking space

SIFF’s mission is to inform potential investors about upcoming projects and connect creators with financial backers, with the ultimate goal of not only increasing the amount of content produced but also the amount of funding entering this space. Utilising Lesflicks's growing industry networks and its sapphic stories film slate— coupled with Lesflicks’s ability to provide letters of intent and a guaranteed distribution outlet to the intended audience—SIFF’s goal is to increase the amount of investment available for sapphic stories to the US$250,000-US$2 million budget range for film and the US$20,000-US$100,000 budget range for web series.

Already at SIFF’s launch in Q4 2021, its first investment project is underway. “Love Me Lex” is an eight episode web series from Perth, Australia. It is written and directed by Sanja Katich and produced by Stephanie Davis.

SIFF has ambitious goals entering FY2022. The collective is looking to recruit socially conscious investors interested in funding higher budget, more commercially viable sapphic films. Whether these investors see their participation as an act of altruistic philanthropy or as an investment with social impact, SIFF invites anyone who would like to join the collective to register their interest.

How to join SIFF

Interested in being part of the SIFF project? Right now, SIFF is registering members to start our investor community. General access is free and gets members onto our mailing list, where they’ll find out about upcoming projects. In Q1 2022, we will be launching our second investment project. At this time, general members will be invited to sign up to an investor level based on their desired investment level if this is a project they want to support. If not, members can wait until a more suitable project is submitted to the collective. SIFF understands that not everyone has an equal ability to invest; therefore, we’ll offer multiple investment levels so that as many people can contribute as possible.

Join the SIFF mailing list here: https://airtable.com/shrNrPpyB4k7Z6u9C

Why SIFF?

The current funding model for sapphic content is insufficient to meet the demands of the LGBT community. It is too reliant on crowdfunding or small-scale investors to create sustainable content at anything but the shoestring level. SIFF believes that part of this problem is a historic inability of sapphic content creators to reach out to potential investors outside of the entertainment industry. The pink dollar is therefore only partially harnessed, after distribution.

SIFF believes there are individuals outside the entertainment industry who would be interested in investing in sapphic content and businesses if only they knew how to do it in a way that would be time efficient and potentially confidential. SIFF understands the difficulties faced by both creators and investors and wants our project to resolve some of them. Our database of investors is confidential. We will not publicise or share the members of our organisation. We will vet project pitches for initial quality control, and while all our members will be informed of potential investment projects, investors will only be put in touch with the filmmaker to discuss investing at their express request. We want our members to be excited about investing in projects they believe in, but also confident that they can be as anonymous as they choose.

Web series and film case studies prove the financial viability of investment

Contrary to the age-old entertainment industry mantra that diversity doesn’t sell, we know it can and has. Here are just a few examples of successful projects that more than exceeded expectations:

• Theatrical release: The Oscar-winning “Monster,” made for a relatively paltry $4.5 million, raked in $60.3 million. “The Kids are All Right,” another Oscar winner, brought in $34.7 million from its budget of $4 million.
• Mainstream TV: The BBC’s “Gentleman Jack” averaged 6.8 million viewers across its eight-episode run, making it the BBC’s top new drama for 2019. Two years later, “Vigil” smashed viewership records in 2021 with an audience of 10.2 million viewers.
• Web series: The American web series “Anyone But Me” has received over 60 million views on YouTube, as has the Indian web series “The Other Love Story.” Poland’s “Kontrola” has received over 43 million. With an average YouTube advertiser pay rate of $2 per 1,000 views, a web series with 50 million views could make $100,000. The same number of views on LesFlicks would make $25 million.

Distribution a major but surmountable problem

In October 2021, Lesflicks research found the majority of sapphic-themed feature films are not distributed by either traditional, mainstream distributors or large mainstream platforms. Of the 99 films made newly available to watch online between 2019 and 2021, only eight received a limited UK theatrical release, 12 made it onto Netflix, three made it onto Amazon Prime Video UK, and 12 were added to LesflicksVOD. The remaining 64 were scattered online on various platforms with limited/no marketing budget or activity, or were stuck with sales agents or without distribution deals for the UK. This distribution problem is common globally and has curtailed much of the financial potential of sapphic film. SIFF can in part alleviate this problem by educating content creators about distribution options and offering LesflicksVOD as a guaranteed distributor.

The current film investment market favors small budget films

The fast-changing landscape of film distribution has been sped up by the COVID-19 pandemic. With platforms like HBO Max and Disney+ doing day-on-day PVOD and theatrical releases or bypassing theatres altogether, investment in bigger budget films is becoming more risky. This encourages investors to mitigate risk by investing in several smaller budget projects instead of one big one. These projects benefit from a lower cost base to cover before returns can be seen.

Diverse content is in demand

Production has shifted dramatically with the pandemic, not only in terms of physical production but also in terms of crew and budget size. The only constant is—and always will be—the mantra “Content is King.” Now that streaming platforms are taking over from traditional broadcast and subscription television, however, there’s a higher than ever demand for films and series that are diverse and inclusive. SIFF plays into this new move toward diversity by empowering queer female talents in front of and behind the camera, giving them the financial support to create sapphic stories with the type of high production values that can appeal to streaming platforms and global audiences.

Who is behind SIFF?

SIFF is a collaboration between Lesflicks, Splinter Pictures and Infinite Pies Productions.

Find out more about the Sapphic Investment Fund: https://sapphicIFF.com

## END ##

To interview Naomi, Karen or Eli; or for more information please get in touch at hello@sapphicIFF.com

About Lesflicks

Lesflicks is a lesbian-owned, independent organisation dedicated to amplifying and supporting sapphic stories. It consists of a streaming platform, editorial website, film database, and community network. Run as a social enterprise, Lesflicks is actively increasing payments to filmmakers for their content and growing the pipeline, quality and ease of access to authentic sapphic stories made by and for queer women. Lesflicks is founded by London-based lesbian Naomi Bennett and is run by an amazing team of queer women based all around the world.

www.lesflicks.com | www.lesflicksvod.com | audience.lesflicks.com | creators.lesflicks.com

About Splinter Pictures

Splinter Pictures is an artist driven, NYC based studio that makes independent film, television and new media content. With a creative house located in Midtown Manhattan, Splinter Pictures adopts a free-thinking, resourceful and ingenious POV in all aspects of each project (from development, to production, to distribution). Its purpose is to create character driven films with great production value for a global audience.

About Infinite Pies Productions

Infinite Pies Productions is an American limited liability corporation that invests in quality projects by small-scale creators catering to the LGBT community. Infinite Pies Productions’ goal is to invest strategically in the visual arts sector as proof of concept that for-profit investment is a means to drive sustainable content creation. Infinite Pies Productions partners with content creators to help them fulfill their creative vision by offering financial support and consulting in return for a pre-established profit-sharing model.

© Scoop Media