Franny Armstrong

UPDATES, CONTACT, PRESS PHOTO

Franny writes regular messages for the Spanner Films email list - join via our homepage - as well as her Facebook page and Twitter account. For press or speaking enquiries, please contact press@ageofstupid.net. There's a high-res press photo available for download here. 

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

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. 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.

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.