"CRUDE"/DIGGING FOR TRUTH

Is filmmaking a slow business? Doh. Is watching paint dry time consuming? Just look at how the force behind the brilliant McLibel doc has been getting on.

In 2002, filmmaker Franny Armstrong was talking to her filmmaking friend Alex Cooke who mentioned vaguely that she wanted to make a film about oil. Nice one.

But before they could get started on that, Armstrong was tied up directing the sizzling doc McLIbel. So it was not until 2004, while she was re-editing McLibel for a cinema release, that she and Alex raised £50,000 for what they described as a five-story narrative about ‘lives run by, for, with, without or in spite of oil’, each one weaving itself ‘around all sides of a complicated issue’, with a view to showing in Cannes in 2006.

Crude, or The Age of Stupid as it may now be known, proved “a complicated issue” indeed, and a constant stream of new ideas for the project led to the input of an additional £200,000 and a longer shooting schedule.

Now, as they are about to head into another edit – number seven it seems - with the hope of a premiere at Sundance in 2008, they are looking for a final £300,000.

To promote the cause, Armstrong has gone public with a website – www.crudemovie.net - featuring the illuminating Crude Diaries plus a unique request for help in finishing the film, for ideas and suggestions as to its final shape.

Oh, and she is offering everyone the opportunity to make a little donation as well, in return for a credit at the end of the film and, if you invest enough, the prospect of making a few quid. You see, films do take money as well as time.

Fingers crossed for the fund raising. Meanwhile, documentary fans wait breathlessly while, presumably, oil execs quiver at the prospect of a McLibel-type grilling.

And you can check out one of the more original websites at www.crudemovie.net and be amused.

Filed July 9, 2007 by Christiaan Harden, Freelance Journalist