A new scheme designed to boost women's films was launched tonight at the Edinburgh International Festival.
The First Weekenders Club, which is organised by the Birds Eye View Film Festival, a platform for female filmmakers, is focusing on helping women's films stay longer in cinemas.
Typically, smaller independent films struggle to stay in cinemas longer than a week or two and so slip quickly into obscurity. The shorter spell in theatres often means that they miss out on free publicity generated by media coverage and word-of-mouth and are soon put onto the backburner by distributors.
The strategy of the new scheme, which involves social networking using simple web technology like email lists and special events around films having a premiere, follows the example set in North America where audiences that fit a certain demographic are urged to come out to the cinema on the crucial first weekend.
The strategy has proved successful in Canada in building audiences for Canadian films and also in the States in helping black and women filmmakers.
Rachel Millward (pictured) who runs the Bird's Eye View Film Festival and the new First Weekenders scheme believes that women directors and screenwriters are poorly represented in cinema.
"Only 7% of directors are women," she says. Millward added that, although launching at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the First Weekenders Club efforts will be focused initially in London and branch out from there.