MY REINCARNATION “Tips” Kickstarter

For once I am going to be short and sweet (as you might have noticed, not exactly my strong suit). I am sitting on my bed in another hotel room – now in Amsterdam – where I come regularly to teach. The whirlwind KICKSTARTER campaign is over, yet the dust is still flying around, making it hard to catch my breath, see straight, and recover.

I have now experienced that illusive state called the “tipping point” that we all read about, that I dreamed about.

“How do you get there?” I mused to myself often and asked my team out loud. Katherine, Lisa and Stefanie and I discussed it – more than once – but we didn’t know.

“Somebody must know.” I said. But all of us stared blank eyed at each other.

We surfed the net looking for clues. I wanted to reread the famous book, but who has time for such luxuries? So we just plugged on with our outreach in every way we could imagine.

Watching the last two days of the MY REINCARNATION campaign from the Krakow Film Festival, I finally knew. I saw our campaign “tip” and become a mass movement. Donations were popping up on my computer screen in intervals of 1 – 3 minutes. The Kickstarter had escalated into a phenomenon that had it’s own life force.

The last hours I sat in a smoky Krakow bar with an Austrian girlfriend, watching the donations fill my computer screen with yellow Kickstarter tags. The number of patrons rose till it surpassed my dream goal of 500 and settled at a whopping 518 backers. I learned that yes, indeed the Kickstarter daily countdown does turn to hours and then to seconds before it clocks “O seconds to go” and “Funding Successful”.

My girlfriend and I jumped up and down, screaming and hugging each other. Locals watching football turned and stared – there hadn’t been a goal. We didn’t care. We were giddy. She was as happy as I was. It was a huge sign of support for MY REINCARNATION, but also for the documentary field as well. Your actions showed that ordinary people everywhere are willing to step up and back important documentaries, when all around the financing is shifting and collapsing.

Afterwards, I discovered that MY REINCARNATION broke all Kickstarter records. It is already in the Kickstarter Hall of Fame! We even had to put out a Press Release!  You can read about it in IndieWIRE and SCREEN International.

MY REINCARNATION is now:

#1 Top Raising Finished Film on Kickstarter;

#2 Highest Raising Documentary at Any Stage of Production;

#4 Highest Earning of All films on Kickstarter at Any Stage

#9 Highest Earning of Any Project on Kickstarter.

I am floored. I want to hug all of you who supported the campaign and say a big THANK YOU! Every donation, small and large, built a web of support that carried us here. Your patronage sends a huge message that there is a strong audience who wants to see MY REINCARNATION. It tells the world that this is a crucial story for our times that must be made available everywhere…

And what does it all mean concretely towards our financial goals?  The film’s completion costs are now completely covered and I can get to work paying all the bills. The extra funds go to the first steps of hiring a booker/distributor to release the film theatrically/educationally in the US market – with a tour by protagonist Khyentse Yeshe. (For the US campaign we will still have to augment the fundraising a little more.) It also goes to begin the process of translating the film in multiple languages for wider distribution abroad.

In case you were worried that all contact with me will stop now that the Kickstarter campaign is over, don’t think of it! There is a ton of news coming, including more fabulous video morsels from the OUTAKES FROM THE FILM (O.F.F.) series on our website. Meanwhile, I will continue to give updates and tell stories as the film tours the world and prepares for each release including the American roll out in the fall. Such an incredible movement has formed around MY REINCARNATION; we will need you and the whole movement to continue spreading the word about this crucial story.  For starters, in just two weeks MY REINCARNATION will screen at the esteemed Sydney Film Festival on June 17^th and 19^th. And there are many more festivals to come…

Meanwhile, the journey continues to build the campaign. You can still support the film through the MY REINCARNATION website. The Limited Special Edition Pre-Release DVD will continue to be on sale till August 1^st only, so hurry if you still would like to purchase one. We will soon be setting up a more extensive STORE on the site, where various fabulous items will be for sale. Check back in the next days to give Stefanie time to do her magic and create a new page with beautiful photos of the various goodies you can buy.

Thanks to all of you who have been the catalysts for getting MY REINCARNATION completed and into the world! To those who donated: you will be contacted in the next week about how to proceed from our Kickstarter site. Words do not describe our gratitude. Sometimes the world contains magic and it “tips”. You have all been part of creating the magical phenomenon of MY REINCARNATION.

Oh well guess I wasn’t so short after all!

Love,

Jennifer and Team – Stefanie, Lisa and Katherine