6/08/2020
#PRIDE2020 - Jade in the wild pride jungle - 30 Pilots Teaser & The Fab Femme feat. Naomi Bennett
feat the Fab Femme
ABOUT THE FAB FEMME MAG
The Fab Femme Mag is a popular media outlet that aims to create a unique space for feminine LGBTQ women from all walks of life. Our goal is to publish creative content that sheds light on stories told by feminine women in society.
Since its creation in 2010, The Fab Femme has amassed more than 2.6
million hits with an average of 45,000 monthly views and over 2,500 unique
visitors daily. The relaunch of The Fab Femme in 2016 gave creator Aryka Randall a chance to better display her talents as a creative entity, a writer, and an over all storyteller. Art, love, music, performance, visual media, and community all draw in the unique and loyal fan base of TFF MAG.
TFF MAG has also interviewed a number of artist and media personalities such as Iggy Azalea, Amanda Perez, Gocha Hawkins (L.A. Hair, RHOA, Lala’s Full Court Life), Margaret Cho, B. Scott, Bebe Zahara (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Kiyomi McCloskey (as seen on The Real L Word),
Ari Fitz, Tabatha Coffey, Fefe Dobson, Dawn Richards, and more.
In 2018 TFF MAG plans on launching a number of women's events and as well as merchandise exclusive to the TFF brand. Stay tuned for updates on TFF and all things FEMME!
NAOMI BENNETT: CREATOR OF LESFLICKS STREAMING PLATFORM
Tell us a little about yourself. Who is Naomi and when did the film become so important in your life?
I’m a 36-year-old lesbian living in London who has always cared about and supported my community and who loves watching lesbians on screen, and last year I realized that lesbian film was in a pretty dire state when it came to UK distribution and that I maybe had a few skills and contacts to make things better. I actually studied film at college, but didn’t continue with it and took an 18-year detour into other areas. However, if I look back over the last 10 years; I’ve been supporting lesbian film on and off. I’ve contributed to many crowd funders, helped find locations and props, even given up my flat for a week for filming. I used to run a lesbian lifestyle website and we always reviewed lesbian film; and it was through attending BFI Flare in London as the press that I gained so much experience and knowledge about the particular challenges and opportunities. I love nothing better than to collaborate with people; to connect people I know and see what amazing things they do together, and to empower women in my community to be their best selves. If I couldn’t do those things I don’t know what I would do.
You created an amazing platform that hosts content for queer women. Tell us about Lesflicks and what it offers viewers.
Lesflicks exists to increase the knowledge of, and access to lesbian & bisexual film and stories that contain queer female characters with positive representation. Our video on demand platform is one of our key offerings that supports this by making it easy to find and watch the content that was made for a lesbian/bisexual audience. Why should you spend hours trawling the web, trying to avoid porn looking for content? However, this isn’t all we do. Lesflicks has several key products that all help to prove a lesbian audience, increase funding, and increase the knowledge of and access to films. So we also have film clubs in the UK; where we go to any cinema screening a lesbian film, so we can fill seats to show we are an audience and we also are willing to pay to see these films. We are looking to expand these once life and cinemas re-open. In the first 9 months of running, we supported 74 short and feature films at 34 events and filled 830 seats in screenings. Not bad from scratch given the industry says there isn’t an audience!!
What inspired you to create Lesflicks?
There were a few triggers that led to the creation of Lesflicks. Firstly hearing from filmmakers who had sales agents and distributors and yet received little to no money in royalties for their content. Secondly seeing women on Facebook almost daily asking for recommendations and seeing the same handful of 6-10 titles being recommended. Many lesbian women can’t even name more than 15 titles – yet I’ve found over 300 so far. Thirdly BFI Flare Film Festival had a great panel on distribution with some big platforms and the advice was if you don’t get a distributor to just distribute yourself – and whilst that is probably the only option I just don’t think every filmmaker should have to start from scratch and find the same audience over and over – they spent all their time, money and energy making it; and it shouldn’t be that hard to then get it to the audience. The fourth and final thing was BFI Player saying they’d love more lesbian films and me realizing that there needed to be more supportive of first-time filmmakers and short filmmakers to increase budgets and to feed a pipeline of films. I am a strong believer that you can’t complain about something if you’re not willing to try and change it… so I decided to try and change things!
What have been some of the ups and downs of creating Lesflicks?
Wow, well the ups are amazing. I mean we got an entire brand and video on demand platform off the ground in 6 months with a very small personal investment. In our first 3 months of running the platform, we secured Rafiki for the UK which was our first major release. We had 6 feature films by the end of the year. In 2020 we also were approached by the one and only Nicole Conn to distribute her new film, More Beautiful for Having Been Broken in the UK and Europe and DVD and globally on the platform – that was pretty monumental to be honest. It also saw us create our first DVD (a very talented team member takes all the credit for the artwork!) – we didn’t see ourselves as going down this route; but when someone like Nicole says she wants to work with you, you don’t say no – so we jumped right in and have already sent out over a hundred DVDs across Europe. We were lucky when lockdown hit the UK and was able to flip from focusing on our film clubs to focusing on the platform, and in the first 10 days of lockdown, we set up 30 virtual events connecting filmmakers with their audience which was not easy – but has been a lot of fun and definitely means I haven’t even noticed I’m locked down! The downs are we are currently entirely volunteer-run and unfunded. We were in a really good sweet spot for approaching investors just before COVID happened. Everything is on hold and because of how new we are there is no support – so we’re pushing through and trying to grow under very challenging circumstances. I have an amazing team of fantastic women supporting Lesflicks because they believe in it – and I can’t wait to be in a position to pay for more regular support from them and others! I also haven’t had a lot of sleep – but starting a new business that is to be expected – thankfully I’ve never really slept a lot so I can manage the long hours to keep up with a global audience online 24/7!
In the future will Lesflicks consider creating original content in conjunction with creators from the platform?
Wow, I mean yes I would love to consider this, or maybe even supporting more filmmakers making content. We need to make sure we’re stable first and established. But absolutely! Lesflicks is set up as a social enterprise in the UK – so we’re committed to reinvesting back into the lesbian film industry as soon as we can. We already pay significantly higher royalties than traditional platforms run on a capitalist model – but we want to do more!
What’s your favorite queer film starring women?
Oh my, that is so tough… I can’t pick one. I’m a Gemini so my mind changes frequently, and it depends on my mood. I love classics like Girl Interrupted; But I’m a Cheerleader, D.E.B.S, and Better Than Chocolate from when I first came out. More recently I’m loving Booksmart, All About E and Forever Not Maybe but my absolute favorite is Professor Marsten and the Wonder Women – it is a shame it came out before Wonder Woman and not after as I think it could have been much bigger. I would love to have that film on Lesflicks – more women need to see it and know our herstory.
Where do you see Lesflicks in the next five years?
Local film clubs in the UK, Europe, Australia, and America; the video on demand platform has grown with many more titles, and a huge subscription base so we can support more films and be funding new content. Seeing lesbian films in the cinema is a major aim for me – and not just the bigger films and biographical films – independent films like Nicole Conn’s film. The audience deserves to see these films on the big screen as they were intended. We hope our We Are An Audience survey will be creating really interesting data to show the audience and that this data will help investors decide to fund lesbian films. So just a few small steps!
Last question. What does creating a platform for women, by women in the film means to you and why?
It means community; it means collaboration; it means success; it means empowerment. It means we are stronger together and a more connected and supported community. Whilst I find it frustrating that we have to segregate ourselves – if Disney can see the benefits of a dedicated platform, then it is definitely the right thing to do. We deserve to have easy access to our content. To have our stories front and center and easy to find. By having a platform run by and for our community we can ensure that the money goes back into more films.
Today was a little bit more text than entertainment but from tomorrow I will share the 30 Pilots series with you. Stay tuned. It is going to be full of pride and magic. Thank you.
