MY REINCARNATION Kickstarter Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

MEDIA CONTACT:
Stefanie Diaz
Zohe Film Productions
116 Franklin Street
NYC, NY 10013
+1-212-966-4427 (O)
+1-646-331-4427(M)
info@zohefilms.com
 

 

Jennifer Fox’s MY REINCARNATION breaks records with Kickstarter. 

 

MY REINCARNATION becomes the #1 Top Raising Finished Film on Kickstarter. Film also #2 highest raising Documentary at any stage of production; #4 Highest Earning of All films on Kickstarter; and #9 Highest Earning of Any Project on Kickstarter.

New York, NY, May 31, 2011 – Jennifer Fox’s newest film, MY REINCARNATION has just raised $150,456 via Kickstarter, more money than any other completed film in the history of the crowd-funding platform, Zohe Films announced today.  Twenty years in the making, the film – which tells the fascinating story of a High Tibetan Buddhist teacher and his Western-born son – smashed previous records and is now the 4th highest earning film project, at any production phase, and the 9th highest earner of any kind in the history of the site.

“Doing Kickstarter for the first time was a liberating experience for me, because I understood that the viewer could be a part of the funding puzzle for my films” said Fox. “I always knew there was a huge audience for MY REINCARNATION, because I received emails everyday from people who were willing to put up their own money to get the film to their community.  As a producer, I feel empowered. Any distributor who tells me that the film doesn’t have a big enough audience doesn’t know the market.  I now have proof.”

Fox began filming MY REINCARNATION twenty-two years ago when she met the high Tibetan Buddhist Master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu and his western-born son, Yeshi, who was recognized at birth as the reincarnation of his great-uncle, a famous master. The film chronicles a father and son as they struggle to overcome differences and save an endangered spiritual tradition.  After the film’s completion, Fox discovered that a co-producing partner was unable to contribute a promised $100,000 portion of the film’s budget.  This left Fox unable to meet the film’s high completion costs. After selling off most of the major television territories, she didn’t believe she could raise enough through further TV sales in time to cover the gap. Fox admits that she faced bankruptcy.

“I was terrified. Everyone knows that you can’t fund a film backwards. How do you explain why you still need money for a film that’s already completed and screening at festivals?  We owed money for the film’s post-production and music rights clearances before we learned that we lost our funding.  Without those funds, the film couldn’t be distributed to television or theaters.  It’s a very complicated message to convey.”

With trepidation, the Producer-Director hesitantly turned to the crowd-funding platform to solve the film’s financial crisis. She and her team, Stefanie Diaz, Katherine Nolfi and Lisa Duva, scrambled to discover a way to raise larger sums of money.  With little information available, they had to figure it out themselves.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding website that offers artists a platform to solicit donations for specific projects.  A goal and a time frame are set. If a project doesn’t raise its financial goal by the end of its allotted time, all donations are refunded.  Only 43% of Kickstarter campaigns succeed.  Most projects set goals in the $3,000 to $15,000 range.  Worried that they could not raise the full $100,000, Fox and team set up a 90-day Kickstarter campaign for half the needed funds – only $50,000.

The team launched an extensive web outreach campaign to spiritual, religious, and the film communities in America and abroad. The team also used social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to extend their reach. “Announcing to all the world on the Internet that my film had a deficit was the most naked thing I have ever done.  In the past, I always approached fundraising as a private hush-hush event. Going public really shook up my egotistical concepts of who I was as a person.  I started to reflect on that in my blog posts in a way that related to the film’s spiritual content.”

The results astounded Fox and team.  Only forty-six days into the campaign, they met their $50,000 goal.  They decided to set a new target – $100,000.  This created a new dilemma. They now had to explain why $50,000 wasn’t actually enough.  Slowly, people began to come around.  “It was incredible to watch my computer screen as the emails came in minute by minute,” Fox explained. “Normally I work on a single film for many years.  Kickstarter changed my view of time. We accomplished so much every hour. The short time pressure really worked to galvanize people to take action.”

When the clock stopped on the campaign at 5:30 pm on Saturday May 28th, the film had raised $150,456 from 518 backers. That is 300% more than the team’s original goal. My REINCARNATION catapulted into the history books for crowd-funded films, illustrating the extensive audience desire to see this film reach distribution to screens everywhere.

Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning filmmaker known for her ground-breaking documentary features and series, including BEIRUT THE LAST HOME MOVIE, AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY, FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN and now MY REINCARNATION. She has executive produced many films, including LOVE & DIANE, ON THE ROPES, and UPSTATE.  She is currently preparing a new fiction feature, THE HORSE’S TALE, and a television series, THE GOOD EGG. Fox is the subject of three films about filmmaking: TO HECK WITH HOLLIWOOD!, CINEMA VERITE: DEFINING THE MOMENT and CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY.

To find out more visit the films’ website: www.myreincarnationfilm.com

For further inquiries write Stefanie Diaz at: info@myreincarnationfilm.com

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