Solution: wind turbines at work

'The Wind' a remarkable new short film commissioned by Greenpeace and directed by Julien Temple, will receive its world premier at the Greenpeace Business Conference in London today (5 October 2000).

'The Wind' celebrates the massive, but as yet untapped, potential of renewable energy resources in Europe in the 21st Century. It also highlights the very real dangers of climate change and the impact this is already having on people's lives throughout the world.

The film is the result of the first ever collaboration between Greenpeace and a major British film director. Julien Temple's films include 'The Great Rock and Roll Swindle', 'Absolute Beginners', 'Pandaemonium', and 'The Filth and the Fury' as well as award winning videos for the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and many others.

For Greenpeace, who have used film and video presentations successfully in the past, 'The Wind' is a bold step in communication terms - encapsulating all their hopes for a cleaner, safer planet in a style that no one will be able to ignore.

Julien Temple's acclaimed feature film on the Sex Pistols, 'The Filth and the Fury', opened at cinemas in Britain and across the world earlier this year. 'The Filth' single-handedly created a new style for the cinema documentary, relating a powerful human drama almost entirely through period footage. 'The Filth' proved a catalyst for Greenpeace campaigners John Sauven and Pete Myers, who were captivated on first viewing. John Sauven explained, "Watching 'The Filth' was a real inspiration and got us wondering whether Julien Temple's unique style could help expand the debate about renewable energy - particularly wind power". He continued, "An approach to Julien was made through Greenpeace supporter and film producer Eski Thomas, the vast resource of the Greenpeace video library in Amsterdam was opened up, and by the end of the summer work on the short film was under way. The idea was that the film would cover the history of the wind from the dawn of time through the petrol crisis to a new vision of the future". Dubbing themselves 'The Aisholt Film Trawlers', Julien Temple, film editor Elaine Hughes and researcher John Shearlaw sifted through hundreds of hours of film, searching for images to fashion their story. Interviews were arranged with key figures in the renewable energy industry, along with experts from the insurance world and the leading authority on climate change - none of whom had ever talked so frankly to camera before. The final piece of the jigsaw was cinematic footage of the future in action - an offshore wind farm sequence specially shot on 35mm by 'Pandaemonium' director of photography, John Lynch.

The end result is a documentary with a powerful message, but also a film that celebrates and highlights the beauty of the moving image. With a host of excerpts from almost a hundred different archive sources - from famous Hollywood movies to rarely seen black and white newsreels and infamous weather forecasts - 'The Wind' captures the drama and the changing moods of nature's ever-present resource.

Along the way there are starring appearances from Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Shakespeare's King Lear and at least one Sex Pistol among many others. They're joined by some of the most beautiful and haunting moments ever created for the cinema - Paradjanov's 'The Colour of Pomegranates', Tarkovsky's 'The Mirror' and Fellini's '81/2' to name but three - with comic highlights courtesy of the wind at large and the late Leonard Rossiter. The backgrounds are as unique and varied as Skegness, Tuno Knob, Europe in the throes of the recent petrol crisis and the wild Northumbrian coast. The images are accompanied by a soundtrack featuring some contemporary and classical greats - from Rameau to Primal Scream, from Underworld, Syd Barrett and Asian Dub Foundation through to the all-conquering menace of Eminem.