Naomi Bennett, Founder of Lesflicks
Provided by Naomi Bennett
In July 2019, Naomi Bennett launched Lesflicks, a digital streaming platform focused on content centering queer women.
Bennett, a longtime lesbian lifestyle blogger based in the UK, was a regular attendee of London’s LGBTQ+ film festival, BFI Flare, where she noticed how many filmmakers discussed the challenges of getting their films into audience’s hands.
She also noticed how many queer women in her circles were desperately seeking more content about their communities.
“It made me realize the marketing wasn’t working,” she said, “and there was a disconnect between the films and the audience.”
So she decided to step in.
“I felt like that was something I could make a difference in and change…Films exist and the audience exists. It’s just about bringing them together.”
After a soft launch of the online platform, Bennett began hosting in-person screening events. They were a huge success, and she intended to continue to host them as a way to both build community and raise awareness of the Lesflicks platform.
Then the pandemic hit, and within days, she had to pivot the entire business online. Undeterred, she began hosting live events on Zoom. By the end of 2020, she had hosted 140 of them.
“Every time they did another lockdown, I was like, we better do a few more,” she said. “Social isolation is a problem for our community.”
While hosting these events, Bennett also focused on increasing the content available on Lesflicks. With the help of a dedicated team of volunteers, she grew the site from only 20 titles to now offering 17 feature films, 85 short films, and 7 web series.
“It’s still relatively small,” Bennett admits, lamenting that people continue to unsubscribe after finishing all the content.
But Bennett emphasized she is releasing new content every week and said she hopes to reel those unsubscribers back in with new films that they’ll struggle to find elsewhere.
“The cinema will only show you the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “If you want to see the stuff below the water, you have to go find it independently. It’s never going to be in the mainstream because those stories don’t have a broad enough audience.”
Some filmmakers, she said, are even starting to make certain films because they know that Lesflicks is there to stream them.
“People are actually wanting to come to the platform because we are ethically pricing it for filmmakers and audiences and making sure content is easy to find and marketing it properly and promoting it and working with the community as well.”
She added that there also seems to be “a massive gaping gap” between what investors are willing to put money into and what audiences actually want. Investors, she said, are hyper-focused on ensuring films include celebrities.
“When I talk to the audience, they don’t care if there’s a celebrity in the film,” Bennett said. “They want the story.”
Bennett believes there will always be a need for a platform like Lesflicks because mainstream platforms have a quota for how many niche films they can offer at any given time. She hopes Lesflicks will give queer women an easy way to find the content they seek without needing to sift through dozens of platforms and titles to find it.
Even many LGBTQ+ platforms lack in women’s content, Bennett said, which is why she feels proud to offer something just for women.
“Women engage more when they’re 100% thought about,” she said. “Because they know it’s a safe space, they know it’s a space where they’ll be a majority, where they’ll actually be around like-minded women, and so that’s quite important too.”
