Media release

For immediate release
16 February 2012

StandUP Auckland in 2012

Film premiere event to address the world's greatest challenge

Aucklanders are being invited to StandUP against our culture's addiction to systemic violence and environmental exploitation, at a film premiere and talk to be held at Auckland University on March 19.

Standup Auckland 2012 will mark the New Zealand premiere of END:CIV by award-winning Puerto Rican filmmaker Franklin Lopez, based on the bestselling book Endgame by US writer Derrick Jensen. Lopez will speak at the premiere.
Jensen says the controversial film addresses “the most important topic ever: how to stop this culture from killing the planet”.

END:CIV demonstrates that despite the hammering the world is getting from economic chaos, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation, corruption and political turmoil, there is hope.

“Acts of courage, compassion and altruism abound, even in the most damaged places,” says Lopez. “By documenting the resilience of the people hit hardest by war and repression, and the heroism of those coming forward to confront the crisis head-on, END:CIV illuminates a way out of this all-consuming madness and into a saner future.”

After the movie, prominent local and international activists – including Lopez and Jensen – will speak about how we can confront the crises the world faces. (Jensen will contribute via video-link.)

International speakers include Guy McPherson, author and professor emeritus of natural resources and the environment at the University of Arizona, and Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called “the most important ecological book of its generation”. She is co-author with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay of Deep Green Resistance. Local speakers include peace activist Ted Howard and sustainable business leader Laurence Boomert.

About Franklin Lopez, director of END:

CIV
Award-winning filmmaker and director Franklin Lopez hails from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Join the Resistance! Fall in Love, Lopez’s breakthrough film, reached minor cult status with tens of thousands of views and screenings around the world. In 2005, Lopez’s post-Katrina video remix George Bush don’t like black people reached a million people and got the attention of the New York Times, the Washington Post and BET. Wired magazine picked Lopez's subMedia TV for its list of top ten online video sites in 2006. The same year, Lopez was hired to produce Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!

About Derrick Jensen, bestselling author of Endgame.
Derrick Jensen is the acclaimed author of twenty books, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. His writing has been described as “breaking and mending the reader’s heart” (Publishers Weekly). He holds a degree in creative writing from Eastern Washington University and a degree in mineral engineering physics from the Colorado School of Minds, and has taught at Eastern Washington University and Pelican Bay State Prison. He packs university auditoriums, conferences and bookstores across the world, stirring audiences with his revolutionary spirit.
Event details

WHAT: StandUP Auckland 2012
WHEN: March 19, from 7pm
WHERE: The Owen Glenn Complex at University of Auckland, Grafton Road, Grafton
TICKETS: Earlybird $8, employed $10, unemployed $5, plus a small booking fee. Available from http://standupakl.eventbrite.co.nz

ENDS

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