Digital entertainment curator FilmBuff announced today that it has licensed worldwide rights to distribute Lesley Chilcott’s documentary feature "CODEGIRL," which follows Technovation, a competition in which groups of high school girls from around the world have three months to design an app to solve a problem in their community.
By 2017, the app market will be valued at $77 Billion. Over 80% of these developers are male. Technovation aims to change that.
The film – which follows groups AMEKA (USA), Team Charis (Nigeria), PortMund (Brazil), WoCo (USA), The X-Women (India) and Puppy Sized Elephants (USA) – will open theatrically on November 1st, 2015, and will be available on all major On Demand platforms starting November 6th, 2015.
In addition, director Chilcott and FilmBuff have established an outreach partnership with Google’s Made with Code initiative (a program launched in 2014 with the goal of encouraging more girls to pursue computer science), which will see "CODEGIRL" released in an exclusive YouTube window (for free for five days before the film opens in theaters), aimed at raising awareness among the core audience of high school girls who are watching content on YouTube.
“As a documentary filmmaker it’s always a challenge to figure out the best way to reach your audience, given that there are so many choices out there,” said director Lesley Chilcott. “Teens get a lot of their content on YouTube so I thought, Why not show the film on YouTube first, for free? I needed two partners to do this—one who could help me spread the film’s message of inspiring girls to learn code, and another who was brave enough to try a distribution plan that had never been done before. Made with Code and FilmBuff, respectively, were the adventurers I was looking for."
YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki said, "I’m proud to announce that together with Google’s Made with Code team, we’re going to host ‘CODEGIRL’ for free on YouTube for five days before it hits the theaters. I want to thank Lesley for the tremendous passion she’s brought to the project to help raise awareness of this important issue."
“We are honored to be working on our second project with Lesley and are thrilled to be in this unique partnership with Made with Code to get CODEGIRL out to the world,” says Janet Brown, CEO of FilmBuff. “We are no strangers to Lesley’s innovative and pioneering spirit, a quality that we here at FilmBuff strive for each and every day. It’s no surprise that she has created a one-of-a-kind partnership with Google’s Made with Code, a partnership that will create the most powerful influencer screening opportunity possible for this film.”
FilmBuff is distributing "CODEGIRL" theatrically, beginning over the weekend, in Los Angeles, on November 1st, and will expand to theaters around country in the coming weeks. The film will be available on all major On Demand platforms, including Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, iTunes, Sony PlayStation, Steam, Vudu and Xbox Video, beginning this Friday, on November 6th, 2015.
Tracey Karka, Tiffany Haynes and Lesley Chilcott p.g.a are producers.
The YouTube release is now underway, so you can watch the entire feature-length documentary embedded below, FOR FREE, before the release window closes:
