HANG OUT across planet Earth: Global environmental festival premieres award winning eco doc 

The DRYING FOR FREEDOM HANGING OUT FESTIVAL, a global festival bringing together thousands of environmental enthusiasts organising their own screenings of the award-winning eco movie DRYING FOR FREEDOM  to show how everyone can make a difference between 19^th April and 5^th May.

With events 20 screenings planned in China, Australia, Canada, USA and in the UK, the festival launches on 19th April to celebrate America’s NATIONAL HANGING OUT DAY.  Hundreds of people have come together to organise screens, bring together people around the world in venues as diverse as cafe’s, bars, homes, libraries, schools and parks.  Everyone will be celebrating drying clothes naturally, turning off electric and gas driers, saving money, fuel and the environment whilst watching the award winning documentary DRYING FOR FREEDOM.

In the film, British filmmaker Steven Lake criss-crosses the world to unravel the reasons and consequences for the banishing of the clotheslines in favour of tumble dryers.  The movie reveals how Corporate America sold us an electric dream: replacing simple centuries-old outdoors line-drying with the electricity hungry dryer, increasing the demand for dirty coal energy across the globe. Now, developing nations are starting their own love affair with an electric utopia exponentially increasing the demands on an already threatened environment.  From the laundry-less gardens of sunny California to India’s communal open air Laundromats, DRYING FOR FREEDOM is a voyage into the new environmental battlefield where money, status and class come first and our planet is a poor second.

White Lantern Film, the award winning UK Production Company behind the festival, has joined forces with Project Laundry List from the United States to try to highlight how wasteful clothes drying with energy has become.  If you would like to know more visit www.hangingoutfestival.com or come along to the Hanging Out Festival at a location near you, just check the web site for details of local screenings or organise one yourself as Our Future is Hanging on the Line! 

Anyone can participate in the Hanging Out Festival and organise their own screening event, simply visit www.haningoutfestival.com or register at http://hangingoutfestival.eventbrite.co.uk/?ref=elink and get a screening pack.

Our planet’s economic and environmental future hangs on an unlikely thread: the clothesline. British filmmaker Steven Lake unravels the reasons for banishing the clotheslines in favour of tumble dryers. Our Future is Hanging on the line.  For more information on the documentary please visit www.dryingforfreedom.com

DRYING FOR FREEDOM HANGING OUT FESTIVAL

To celebrate National Hanging Out Day in America we have launched the Hanging Out Festival, a series of screenings of our award winning environmental movie.

Bringing thousands of enthusiast together, the festival aims to raise awareness of natural clothes line drying by spreading the word through screening events around the world.

The festival team have been very fortunate to have a festival poster created by graphic designer and artist Rob Fuller. The poster features an adaptation of the classic artwork from the documentary where an electric drier crushes a clothesline. Rob created the original poster for the movie to illustrate how the drier is literally destroying this free environmental way to dry clothes. Rob also designed the Hanging Out Festival logo linking the festival title with a clothes line.

Give the new Drying For Freedom Hanging Out Festival poster an airing and check out how you can get involved at www.hangingoutfestival.com

Organise a screening of the award winning environmental documentary

The DRYING FOR FREEDOM HANGING OUT FESTIVAL is a global film festival showcasing the award winning environmental movie Drying For Freedom in venues across planet Earth.

Launching on 19th April 2013 to celebrate America’s NATIONAL HANGING OUT DAY and running for 10 days, the festival aims to screen the movie in over 300 venues in 20 different countries.  The festival will bring together thousands of environmental enthusiasts, as volunteers organising their own local screenings in homes, libraries, community centres, bars, cafes and other venues in a global festival of action to help raise awareness of how we can all make a difference.  For more information visit our festival micro site at www.hangingoutfestival.com or register below.

If you would like to participate we need to send you a Festival Screening Pack which includes a special limited edition Drying For Freedom DVD (only available in English without subtitles), 5 posters to promote your screening, a press pack to help you market your screening and information on helpful supportive organisations.  To register use the form below or click, register and get a pack through eventbrite:

As independent film makers, we don’t have a Hollywood studio or investors supporting the film or this festival; therefore we need to pass on the postage and DVD costs.  The small charge for the pack includes a license to screen the film and covers international shipping costs.  To participate, please select the date you wish to hold your screening and the relevant Festival Screening Pack based on your geographical location and process the payment online below:

Eventbrite uses PayPal or Google Checkout to process transactions from all major credit and debit cards. Once we receive the payment we will process and mail you your pack. Due to international shipping times, please allow at least 5 – 8 working days between registration, payment and the screening date.  For full terms and conditions please visit our registration page on Eventbrite here.

Hang out with Drying For Freedom as our future is hanging on a line!

Director Steven Lake Hangs Out at the Russian film premiere.

The award winning documentary premieres in Moscow on 2nd March at the EcoCup International Environmental Film Festival.  Documentary director, Steven Lake, will be attending the premiere and participating in an audience Q&A after the film.  This is the first time the movie has been shown in Russia where there is a growing environmental movement.

Steven has commented “In every stage of making and promoting Drying For Freedom we have to think about the environmental impact of our film footsteps.”

Commenting on the flight to Russia, Steven said “There have been plenty of opportunities to travel to screen the film that we have turned down for the simple fact that the film itself can speak for us, and so there is no need for us to create more waste flying around the world. We have had to turn down the opportunity to fly out to a variety of lovely hot exotic places for this reason. In being invited to Russia I have decided to take the opportunity to explore a territory for the film that is incredibly foreign to us. I believe that the benefits of representing the film whilst there and doing all we can to make contacts relevant to sustainability and beneficial to our environmental cause.”

The EcoCup International Environmental Film Festival is the first non-profit festival in Russia which introduces Russian audience with the best international environmental film.

For more information on the festival please visit http://www.ecocup.ru or search for the festival on Facebook or twitter.

The film is the headline screening on Saturday night at 9.30pm and with a weather forecast of 34c, it should be a perfect evening for watching a film on the giant outdoor screen. Deckchairs will be up for grabs but otherwise the audience can sit on the warm stone floor.

Having already seen the film in Southampton on a cold autumn evening, I am looking forward to watching it again on a warm night, beneath the stars.  It is an excellent documentary that looks at the heated debate of natural outdoor drying as opposed to energy hungry tumble dryers.

In this country of abundant sunshine, it is hard to understand why anyone has the need to use tumble dryers, especially as the iconic Hills Hoist washing line is an Aussie institution. But sadly, Australians are big energy users and the tumble dryer may well contribute to this fact. This film will help people to see that when it comes to the question of saving energy, the answer is blowing in the wind!

Written by Cara Sandys.

SUSTAINABLE LIVING FESTIVAL SCREENS DOCUMENTARY

Drying For Freedom has hung out at festivals worldwide and now the documentary premieres in Australia on 16th Feb as part of the Transition Film Festival running alongside the Sustainable Live Festival in Melbourne.  We are really excited about the screening in the country where rotary clothes lines are a common day fixture and would like to thank Hills Home & Lifestyle for all their support which has helped to make the film possible.

In 1998 a small group of people converged in the regional township of Musk, just outside Daylesford in Australia for the first Sustainable Living Festival.  For many it was the first opportunity they had to share information and knowledge about sustainable living.  Not only did this groundbreaking event initiate a unique gathering, it also triggered the formation of a hosting organisation, the Sustainable Living Foundation, in later years.

In 2001, due to increased audience and volunteer numbers, the event relocated to the Alexandra Gardens in the City of Melbourne.  With a new audience and an urban flavour, the event showcased more than two hundred exhibitors and presented over one hundred seminars.  In 2003 the Festival was on the move once more and turned to Melbourne’s newest landmark, Federation Square. With a new emphasis on developing a cultural, creative festival, the event reached out to an awakening mainstream audience. It is here that the Festival has settled for the past seven years, experiencing rapid audience growth with crowds of over 100,000 people.

Not surprisingly, the Festival has evolved much since its inception, yet it continues to reflect the growing momentum and cultural dynamics within the community. If there is one thing we can say for sure about the future of the Sustainable Living Festival, it is that it will continue to change shape as we continue to learn about more sustainable ways to live on the planet.

If you are attending the festival please let us know and post your comments and photos here or tweet with tag #clotheslinemovie or post updates on our FaceBook page.

Drying For Freedom has won BEST ENVIRONMENTAL FEATURE at the Costa Rica International Film Festival!

The Costa Rica International Film Festival is an exciting and important international destination for independent films showcasing an incredibly diverse array of short and feature films from across the world.  The international festival brings filmmakers from every country together to meet, discuss and share their ideas and visions.

Director Steven Lake and Producer Adam J Merrifield are very proud to receive the award for the documentary which has been screened at film festivals across the world.  The film won the award at the sixth annual international film festival held in Montezuma, Costa Rica earlier in November.  The Central American country found the film’s message an important one worthy of the award.

For more information on the festival visit www.costaricafilmfest.com

AMERICAN CONSERVATIONIST GATHER

The 10th American Conservation Film Festival screens the award winning documentary Drying For Freedom on 3rd and 4th November.

The host for the festival is Shepherd University, a liberal arts institution located one hour from Washington, D.C., in historic Shepherdstown, West Virginia.  The motivating force behind the American Conservation Film Festival (ACFF) is the power of imagery to inform and inspire. As environmental issues become increasingly global, understanding our individual roles in the biosphere and the global human community is more important than ever. Yet many of us don’t appreciate how our actions, lifestyles, and cultures affect the world we live in.

Film is a powerful medium for breaking through the information overload of modern life, helping us connect with the natural world around us in ways we otherwise wouldn’t. With our emphasis on the intersection between people and the environment, ACFF provides a venue to explore these issues and bring them back to our own lives, through high quality films and discussions with filmmakers and other experts.

Drying For Freedom will be screen twice over the weekend, for more information please visit http://www.conservationfilm.org

PURBECK ECO EVENING AT A CASTLE

The award-winning eco documentary Drying For Freedom will be screened as part of the unique Environmental Evening at the Purbeck Film Festival on 25th October at Durlston Castle.

 The evening is supported by The Co-operative and PEAT and aims to raise environmental awareness.  The award-winning eco film GASLAND will be shown alongside DRYING FOR FREEDOM at the event with an open discussion afterwards on the issues that the films raise.

The Purbeck Film Festival is the longest running rural film festival in the UK and is now in its 15th year.  Each year the Festival makes a selection of the films that we think our audience will like, and gives about 100 performances in the last two weeks of October at venues throughout the Purbeck including many at unusual venues.

Durlston Castle is the setting for this unique environmental evening which will see two films screened.  GASLAND is a film about Fracking, giving the viewer the opportunity to learn more about this method of extracting gas from shale and the effect it may be having on the environment and on our future.  It is the perfect partner to DRYING FOR FREEDOM which explores the future demand of energy through the clothesline.  Filmmaker Steven Lake is from the Isle of Purbeck and was a projectionist at the Wareham Rex Cinema, the local cinema in the area.  Steven will attend the screening and be part of the debate exploring issues of energy and how we can all change something to improve the planet’s environment.

Tickets for the event can be purchased at Durlston Castle or Swanage Tourist Information Centre.  For more information please visit http://www.purbeckfilm.com.

DRYING FOR FREEDOM HANGS OUT A NEW POSTER

To mark the worldwide distribution of the award winning documentary DRYING FOR FREEDOM we have released a new poster.The poster will be used to promote the film as the movies newly appointed distributor markets the film around the world to broadcasters and DVD distributors.

 Based on the concept of the electric clothes dryer squashing the natural outdoor line drying method, the poster was shot in Dorset (UK) and designed by artist Rob Fuller.  The striking image will hopefully also be used as the films DVD cover as the movie prepares for a global release.  The documentaries producer, Adam J Merrifield, commented:

“We are extremely happy with the new poster design which represents everything the movie is about focusing on how the electric drier has literally trodden all over this environmental natural clothes drying method”

Watch out for the movie at a DVD store near you soon!

We would love to hear what you think of the poster so please leave a comment or a message.  Remember to follow us on FaceBook and Twitter by searching for DRYING FOR FREEDOM.