Franny Amstrong
- Écriture
- Image
- Réalisation
Former pop drummer and self-taught filmmaker Franny Armstrong, born 1972, has directed three feature documentaries - The Age of Stupid (2008), McLibel (2005) and Drowned Out (2003) - which have together been seen by 70 million people on TV, cinema, internet and DVD worldwide. In the early days of the internet in 1996 she founded the McSpotlight website, which Wired magazine described as "the blueprint for all activist websites".
Through her company, Spanner Films, Franny pioneered the “crowd-funding” finance model, which allows filmmakers to raise reasonable-size budgets whilst retaining ownership of their films - Age of Stupid is the most successful known example, raising £900,000+ from 300+ investors - as well as the “Indie Screenings” distribution system, which lets anyone make a profit by holding screenings of independent films - Stupid was screened locally 1,100+ times in the first six months. In March 2009, the solar-powered Age of Stupid "People's Premiere" set a new Guinness World Record by being simultaneously screened in 63 cinemas across Britain, whilst only producing 1% of the emissions of a standard premiere. (…)
Franny has written chapters for three books, won Sheffield Doc Fest's "Inspiration Award", been called a 21st Century Heroine by Harper's Bizarre, an Eco Hero of the Decade by The Guardian, one of "London's 1,000 most influential people" by The Evening Standard, one of the world's Top 100 Women by the Guardian and Green Personality of the Year by Edie. She is Professor Franny at Wolverhampton University and she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Open University at Exeter Catherdral in 2016 for her "exceptionally innovative and socially responsible methods to make social justice films more accessible to the general public". Her latest projects are the climate comedy Pie Net Zero (2020) which trended at #9 on YouTube globally, and What If? (2019) starring Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas and Chris Packham in a parallell universe where humans ARE tackling climate change.
(Source : Spanner Films)
