LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) May 25, 2018
The future is even brighter for four very different films who were named the winners of the Seed&Spark’s 100 Days of Optimism Crowdfunding Rally with WeTransfer and Bow and Arrow Entertainment. Docu-series Looking For Leia, feature documentary Scab Vendor: The Life and Times of Jonathan Shaw and narrative short Pozole were selected as winners by rally partners WeTransfer and Bow and Arrow Entertainment out of 56 total campaigns for projects telling stories of hope, change, redemption and inspiration. Feature documentary The Book Keepers was also awarded a marketing grant from WeTransfer. Together, they were awarded more than $750,000 in grand prizes.
“We are so thrilled to have been able to surface these incredible winners, but we are more excited about the fact that in a rally like this, there are no losers. All in all, 56 shorts, features and series raised $709,000 from close to 20,000 supporters and followers,” said Emily Best, Seed&Spark founder and CEO. “All of them have raised money and gathered audiences to get their work made and seen.”
The rally had a 88% success rate, besting the platform’s already best-in-industry aggregate success rate of 75% in its nearly six years of operation. The winners were selected from nine finalists who all raised 100% or more of their crowdfunding goal and build an audience of at least 1,000 followers on Seed&Spark:
Scab Vendor: The Life and Times of Jonathan Shaw from directors Mariana Thorne and Lucas de Barros received a $20,000 grant from Bow and Arrow Entertainment as well as a $15,000 grant to finish the film and $150,000 in marketing support from WeTransfer. (https://www.seedandspark.com/fund/scabvendor)
Looking for Leia, made by an all-female team led by producer/director Annalise Ophelian, received a $15,000 grant from WeTransfer. The film will also receive $150,000 worth of marketing support from WeTransfer. (https://www.seedandspark.com/fund/lookingforleia)
Pozole from writer-director Jessica Mendez Siqueiros received a $25,000 grant from WeTransfer. The film will also receive $250,000 worth of marketing support from the brand to promote the film. (https://www.seedandspark.com/fund/pozole)
The Book Keepers from director Phil Wall received a marketing grant valued at $50,000 from WeTransfer that includes advertising and creative services. (https://www.seedandspark.com/fund/bookkeepersmovie#team)
“We’re humbled to work together with Seed&Spark, Bow and Arrow and the Looking for Leia, Pozole, and Scab Vendor teams to bring these projects forward. Their stories resonated with us right away, and we’ve found them even more powerful and refreshing since getting to know Annalise, Jessica, Mariana and Lucas in the last few weeks. We’re excited to see them come to life and to see them on the screen,” said WeTransfer president Damian Bradfield.
“It was absolutely inspiring to work with Seed & Spark and take part in 100 Days of Optimism. It gave us the chance to review many interesting projects from such a broad spectrum of unique and diverse filmmakers. There are so many stories in our world that simply need to be told and we at Bow and Arrow cannot wait to help bring Mariana and Lucas’ Scab Vendor and Annalise’s Looking For Leia to audiences,” said Matthew Perniciaro, partner at Bow and Arrow Entertainment.
“Seed&Spark’s goal is to build a robust, sustainable distributed creative middle class - that means we want filmmakers to be able to build careers from wherever they are. We’re using our location in Los Angeles to help distribution more and more ‘Hollywood’ opportunities across the country to help filmmakers everywhere level up their careers without having to move long distances and, you know, pay LA rents,” Best said.
100 Days of Optimism was the first of several crowdfunding rallies for Seed&Spark in 2018. Communal Nightmares — a hunt for the next great feature genre film in partnership with 3311 Pictures and The Orchard — has 33 projects are live right now. Seed&Spark has already announced the follow-up to 2017’s Hometown Heroes with the Duplass Brothers kicking off later this summer for feature films (both narrative and documentaries).
For details on Seed&Spark rallies, visit http://www.seedandspark.com/rally.
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About Seed&Spark
Seed&Spark is an entertainment platform built to increase representation in media and help creators build sustainable careers. We connect some of the most unique new voices making movies and shows to the diverse audiences hungry for diverse stories and storytellers via crowdfunding and subscription streaming. Since our founding in 2012, more than $12M has been raised across more than 900 crowdfunding campaigns on Seed&Spark, with the highest campaign success rate of any crowdfunding platform in the world. Our highly curated streaming library is full of award-winning movies and shows by diverse creators from all over the world.
About WeTransfer
WeTransfer is the simplest way to send your files around the world. Every month, 40 million active users transfer over one billion files. The service is all about making the creative process effortless, for everyone. Since 2009 we have been showcasing amazing creative work on WeTransfer with gratis advertising for musicians, photographers, and artists, giving away over five billion pages a year. We also offer financial grants, tech support and promotion to help creatives tell the stories that matter to them and bring relevant cultural projects to life. Above all, we hope these stories encourage other people to make something new themselves. Because inspiration means more when you do something with it.
About Bow and Arrow Entertainment
Bow and Arrow Entertainment was founded in 2014 by Matthew Perniciaro and Michael Sherman to create a focus on artistdriven narrative and documentary motion pictures. Recent films include Crystal Moselle’s Skate Kitchen and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline premiering in Sundance 2018 and Sundance 2017 entries Jeff Baena’s The Little Hours, Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits and Dustin Guy Defa’s Person To Person. The company will next produce an adaptation of Richard Wright’s famed novel Native Son, adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks and to be directed by Rashid Johnson.
