- Born
- Age of Stupid is the most successful known example, raising £900,000+
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. 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
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. It also hit No 1 at the UK Box Office, backed by zero pounds spent on advertising. Then in September 2009, a million people watched Stupid's Global Premiere event - featuring Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson & Radiohead's Thom Yorke - in 700 cinemas in 63 countries, linked by satellite.
In September 2009 Franny founded the 10:10 climate campaign which aims to cut the UK's carbon emissions by 10% during 2010 and which has amassed huge cross-societal support including Adidas, Microsoft, Spurs FC, the Royal Mail, 75,000 people, 1,500 schools, a third of local councils, the entire UK Government and the Prime Minister. 10:10 launched internationally in March 2010 and, as of July 2010, has autonomous campaigns up and running in 41 countries, where some of the key sign-ups include the French Tennis Open, the city of Oslo and L'oreal. 10:10 estimates that organisations doing 10:10 have so far cut 500,000 tonnes of C02.
She is a Londoner born and bred.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Lizzie Gillett
- Daughter of Peter Armstrong.
- I was born in the early 70s as part of the MTV generation who were told by a million adverts that the point of our existence was to shop more. Daunting though the task ahead may be, I feel enormously inspired and quite relieved that it turns out that we have something important to do. The people who came before us didn't know about climate change and the ones who come after will be powerless to stop it. So it's down to us. Other generations came together to overturn slavery or end apartheid or win the vote for women. There is nothing intrinsically more useless about our generation and there is no doubt about what we have to do. The only question which remains is whether or not we give it a go.
- There are very few stories compelling enough to dedicate five years of my life to, but the deeper I get into the world of Undercovers, the more committed I become to making a heart-stopping drama which touches and angers millions of people all round the world.
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