 | |
| Type | Film production company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Independent film |
| Founded | London, UK (1997) |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Key people | Franny Armstrong Lizzie Gillett |
| Products | Documentary film |
| Website | spannerfilms |
Spanner Films is a small London-based documentary company founded by film director Franny Armstrong in 1997.
The company's earliest production was McLibel (1997/2005), a documentary film about David Morris and Helen Steel, a postman and a gardener, who took on McDonald's and won the case, with courtroom reconstructions by Ken Loach. Drowned Out (2002) follows an Indian family who decide to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam.
The Age of Stupid , a drama-documentary-animation hybrid film about anthropogenic climate change, was released in 2009. The film was crowd funded via a bespoke website which raised £1.5m. [1]
Pie Net Zero, a comedic short film about climate change and biosequestration efforts in South West England written by Armstrong and comedian Tom Walker and featuring Walker’s character Jonathan Pie, was released in 2020. [2]
In March 2014 Spanner Films announced their new project Undercovers, a television drama series about the undercover police officers who infiltrated the British activist scene for 50 years, and the women who unknowingly had long term relationships and children with the spies. The series is being written by Simon Beaufoy, Alice Nutter, and Franny Armstrong, and executive produced by Tony Garnett. [3]
Lucy Walker is an English film director. She has directed the documentaries Devil's Playground (2002), Blindsight (2006), Waste Land (2010), Countdown to Zero (2010), and The Crash Reel (2013). She has also directed the short films The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011) and The Lion's Mouth Opens (2014).
Drowned Out is a 2002 documentary by Franny Armstrong about the Sardar Sarovar Project. Shot over three years, Drowned Out follows one family’s stand against a government dam project which is set to destroy their home and their village.
Simon Beaufoy is a British screenwriter. Born in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, he was educated at Malsis School in Cross Hills, Ermysted's Grammar School and Sedbergh School, he read English at St Peter's College, Oxford and graduated from Arts University Bournemouth. In 1997, he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for The Full Monty. He went on to win the 2009 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire as well as winning a Golden Globe and a BAFTA award.
Franny Armstrong is a British documentary film director working for her own company, Spanner Films, and a former drummer with indie pop group The Band of Holy Joy. She is best known for three films: The Age of Stupid, a reflection from 2055 about climate change, McLibel, about the McDonald's court case and Drowned Out, following the fight against the Narmada Dam Project.
McLibel is a British documentary film directed by Franny Armstrong and Ken Loach for Spanner Films about the McLibel case. The film was first completed in 1997 as a 52-minute television version after the conclusion of the original McLibel trial. It was then extended with new footage to 85-minute feature length in 2005, after the McLibel defendants took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Covert policing in the United Kingdom are the practices of the British police that are hidden to the public, usually employed in order that an officer can gather intelligence and approach an offender without prompting escape.
The Age of Stupid is a 2009 British documentary film directed by Franny Armstrong, with first-time producer Lizzie Gillett. The executive producer is John Battsek.
Not Evil Just Wrong is a 2009 documentary film by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer that challenges Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth by suggesting that the evidence of global warming is inconclusive and that the impact global warming legislation will have on industry is much more harmful to humans than beneficial. The movie was filmed in 2008 and was screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and at the RightOnline conference in 2009.
Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer are conservative Irish documentary filmmakers and New York Times best-selling authors. They have written and produced the political documentaries FrackNation, Not Evil Just Wrong, and Mine Your Own Business, as well as The Search for Tristan's Mum and Return to Sender. Their latest project, Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer, is a true crime drama film based on the crimes of Kermit Gosnell. Their book, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, was an Amazon and New York Times best seller. They are married.
Martyn Pick is a British animator and director. Pick is recognised for his distinctive fusion of live-action and animation, and the fluid, painterly style of his film-making.
No Pressure is a 2010 short film produced by the global warming mitigation campaign 10:10, written by Richard Curtis and Franny Armstrong, and directed by Dougal Wilson. Intended for cinema and television advertisements, No Pressure is composed of scenes in which a variety of men, women and children in every-day situations are graphically blown to pieces for failing to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the 10:10 campaign to reduce CO2 emissions. The film's makers said that they viewed No Pressure as "a funny and satirical tongue-in-cheek little film in the over-the-top style of Monty Python or South Park". Before its release, The Guardian described it as "attention-grabbing" and "pretty edgy."
Mark Kennedy, undercover name Mark Stone, is a former London Metropolitan Police officer who, whilst attached to the police service's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, (NPOIU) infiltrated many protest groups between 2003 and 2010 before he was unmasked by political activists as an undercover policeman on 21 October 2010 and his identity was confirmed by the media three days later.
Indie Screenings, invented by Spanner Films and coded by Torchbox, is an online film distribution system which ‘cuts out the middle man’. The system gives anyone, anywhere access to licenses to screen certain independent films and keep any revenue for themselves. It launched with Franny Armstrong's climate change blockbuster The Age of Stupid which has now been screened 1474 times.
Peter William Armstrong is a television and radio producer, whose career at the BBC spanned 25 years. He is best known for innovative religious programming and as the founder and project editor of the BBC's Domesday Project (1986), for which he won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 BAFTAs. He is the father of documentary maker Franny Armstrong.
The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was an undercover unit of Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service, set up in 1968 with the approval of the Wilson government, to infiltrate British protest groups. It was part of the Special Branch, and worked closely with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). It operated from 1968 to 2008.
Louise Wallis is a DJ, singer, and writer who is also known for her animal advocacy. She lives in London, England.
Noclip is a crowdfunded media company dedicated to creating video game documentaries. It was founded by Danny O'Dwyer, an Irish video game journalist and documentary producer, in 2016, and is solely funded via Patreon donations.
Jonathan Pie is a fictional character created and portrayed by English comedian Tom Walker. A political correspondent, Pie appears in a series of online videos in which he rants and explodes in anger about the state of British, American and Australian politics, with the videos being presented as though he were a real reporter speaking his personal opinions to the camera before or after filming a regular news segment.
The Lobby is a series of documentaries produced by Al Jazeera that investigate the influence of the Israel lobby in the United Kingdom and the Israel lobby in the United States and their relationship to the BDS movement.
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