From March 25 - 31, Psiphon partnered with British Council to deploy the BFI Flare #FiveFilms4Freedom campaign, a global digital human rights initiative and history’s first global, digital LGBT cinematic event. A leader in contemporary LGBT cinema for 29 years, BFI Flare 2015 sought to encourage the world to watch a film together, and show that love is a basic human right.
Psiphon helped maximize the global impact of the campaign, connecting the festival’s LGBT filmmakers and their stories to audiences in 135 countries around the world, in some of the most heavily censored societies — places where freedom of expression is not a given, in particular for members of the LGBT community. According to #FiveFilms4Freedom Director Alan Gemmell, the initiative “was a truly ground-breaking way to support freedom and equality all over the world and showcase some of our finest short filmmakers… we’re incredibly proud that our campaign reached tens of millions of people and that we were able to show solidarity with people around the world who risk their lives everyday just to live and love.”
Through the Psiphon platform, more than 5 million viewers were made aware of the festival, and viewed the landing page 13 million times.
The partnership was a litmus test of Psiphon’s capabilities as a publishing platform, and demonstrated its power to connect diverse international audiences to culturally-relevant content, to each other, and to a global conversation on a massive scale.
Psiphon CEO Karl Kathuria was pleased with the outcome. “We are really excited to have helped raise awareness of this film festival,” he said. “Many people using our software are in countries where it can be difficult to access LGBT content, so this is a unique opportunity to connect them with #FiveFilms4Freedom and help them to join in with the conversation over social media.”
Kathuria confirmed that Psiphon will continue to pursue future initiatives in art, cinema, and other cultural activities. “As a content delivery tool, our technology holds substantial and untapped potential to engage a global audience, regardless of information controls that might be imposed on them. Psiphon will be pursuing several more opportunities to promote and distribute content for cinematic events over the remainder of 2015.”
#FiveFilms4Freedom will return in 2016 with an expanded international programme. Psiphon’s free and open source software continues to be available for Windows desktops and Android mobile devices, helping people all over the world connect with each other over the open internet.
To learn more about the #FiveFilms4Freedom project, visit: http://film.britishcouncil.org/our-projects/2015/fivefilms4freedom
To learn more about BFI Flare, visit: http://www.bfi.org.uk/flare
To learn more about the British Council, visit: http://www.britishcouncil.org/