UPDATED EVERY
FRIDAY
Last Update:
Friday 19th August, 2005
 
PUBLICATION
FEATURES
  
ISLINGTON
WEST END EXTRA
 
SECTIONS
MOVIES
MUSIC
THEATRE
THE CROW
 
NAVIGATION


With Google
 
 
 
Spanner in the works

Franny Armstrong documented the longest running trial in British legal history. She gives Kim Janssen some tips on how to be a renegade filmmaker
WHEN Franny Armstrong’s dad told her, in 1994, that a case starting that week at the High Court might make an interesting subject for a film, she had no idea it would end up being the longest trial in British history.
More than a decade later, McLibel, her film about burger giant McDonald’s disastrous attempt to sue Helen Steel and Dave Morris when they handed out leaflets criticising the multi-national’s business practices, has been broadcast by more than 50 million people throughout the world.
As an advert for a new generation of do-it-yourself punk ethic zero-budget film-makers, her story, like that of the McLibel two, could hardly be more inspiring. Find a subject, buy a cheap consumer camcorder, start shooting and you could end up on the BBC was the message any would-be Armstrongs could take from her remarkable success.
Everyone’s got a book in them, they used to say – could it be that everyone now has a film?
It’s not nearly as simple as that, of course.
If owning a pencil does not make you a poet, then possession of a video camera does not make you an award-winning director, either.
As Franny’s co-conspirator at Spanner Films, Lizzie Gillett, points out: “We go to a lot of film festivals and there’s a lot of crap out there.”
More...
Puppets bring Jackie’s Midnight world to life


A children’s writer and a playwright are bringing theatre to teenagers, writes Tom Foot

In 1997 playwright Vicky Ireland toured London schools looking for inspiration. She kept her question simple: “What do you love?”
“Jacqueline Wilson,” (the children’s author) was the resounding reply.
Ireland, born in Scarborough, was then the artistic director of the Poltka Theatre in Wimbledon. She wrote to Wilson proposing an adaptation of her 1996 novel, Bad Girls.
A relationship blossomed and Ireland – now a children’s playwright – has adapted four of Wilson’s books for the stage which have toured far and wide to Russia, Spain, Finland, Dubai and Singapore.

OTHER HEADLINES
The maverick theatre which launched a thousand faces
FEATURE
Goodbye to nerves
HEALTH
English law can deal with terror already
FORUM: Opinion in the CNJ
Alicia, the amazing blind Grande Dame of the ballet
One Week with John Gulliver

 
   
   
 
All content © New Journal Enterprises, 2005