Drying For Freedom

Short Synopsis

DRYING FOR FREEDOM takes a unique look at one aspect of our lives, electric clothes drying is the new environmental battlefield as millions of outdoor clotheslines are banned in the U.S and electric drying is sold as a status symbol.  The film explores how clothes dryers are becoming ‘must have’ appliances dramatically increasing global energy demands bringing the environmental campaign home revealing how our future is hanging on a line.

Description/Treatment

DRYING FOR FREEDOM will reveal the story of our love affair with energy; the people who are campaigning against it, the rules society have created to sustain it and the destruction it is causing to the planet. It will explore how outdoor clothes drying has been banned in countless communities across the U.S. and how these communities are fighting for their right to dry naturally. DRYING FOR FREEDOM will also show how corporate America sold its citizens the dream of electric bliss in the 1950’s. It will investigate the argument that globalisation continues to promote the use of electric driers over clotheslines signifying that our future is hanging on the line.

DRYING FOR FREEDOM aims to be a global exploration of the environment, freedom, communities and corporate exploitation. The documentary will include key contributors from the U.S and as far as India, revealing the enormity of the problem. Within the U.S. the documentary includes contributors from Verona, Mississippi, where investigations are underway in a unique clothes line murder case, to the home of Alexander Lee leader of the world’s leading clothesline pressure group in Concord, New Hampshire. The film will explore our electric heritage and events leading up to millions of clothesline bans within U.S. communities where the restrictions of freedom has become an un-environmental way of life. 6% of the average U.S. household energy bill currently goes on electric clothes drying, which translates into $5 billion a year being spent in the US alone. Drying clothes has therefore become the new environmental battlefield. DRYING FOR FREEDOM is the definitive account of the inconvenient truth about clotheslines and will explore how certain challenges to personal freedoms are affecting our environment. The film is narrated by filmmaker Steven Lake who goes on a dramatic global expedition to reveal the story of the humble clothesline. Tired of seeing a clothesline from his window, Keith Spears began an argument with his neighbour, Bobby Brinker, in an incident which led to the shooting and ultimate death of Mr Spears. With exclusive access to the people behind this shocking clothesline murder, the film will highlight the passions and tensions on this environmental front line.

Steven will travel across America to seek the truth. With access to contributors including Bobby Brinker, J.B Long (Verona Chief of Police) and the Spears Family, Steven will scrutinise how the changing attitude to clotheslines led to the dramatic murder. The DRYING FOR FREEDOM story will travel to India to examine the way in which emerging nations traditionally wash and dry clothes. The simplicity of life here will be a stark contrast to the complexities of life within communities in the U.S. Steven will meet the Temkar family who dry their clothes on an outdoor clothesline. The family works hard and dream of one day owning a range of electrical appliances, an electric dryer is high on their list. The story will then travel to New Hampshire where Alexander Lee from Project Laundry List has been campaigning since 1997 to change the negative attitudes towards clotheslines. His group has faced legal challenges in four U.S. states and frequently come up against Home Owners Associations who are responsible for imposing widespread clothesline bans. The group have been trying to persuade President Obama to hang a clothesline on the White House lawn as a symbol of his support for the campaign. This takes place alongside various other initiatives to encourage line drying in homes across the country on the understanding that this act provides the possibility to reduce the nation’s vast domestic carbon footprint.

The Home Owners Associations, which are in existence in various forms across North America, are thought to be one of the key problems in the fight for the right to dry. Steven will travel to Bucks County, Pennsylvania to meet Real Estate Agent, Kasey Kocher who sells property for her local Home Owners Associations. She gives an insight into regulations which ban clotheslines and explains that potential buyers in her community sign a ‘waiver of rights’ to ensure that they have no control over the exterior of their property. She believes there is too much risk in giving people control over their own homes as they would then have the ability to damage the visual aesthetic of the neighbourhood. Questioning how these seemingly ridiculous bans came into force, Steven will speak to the author of Privatopia, Evan McKenzie, to examine the power Home Owners Associations have over American property owners. He will seek to understand how people have accepted the principle that homeownership with less control is more appealing than a community where an individual has complete power over their own property exposing the great American contradiction – freedom verses profits and aesthetics. In America, the ‘right-to-dry’ is becoming big news. Recent threats made against an environmental activist and clothesline enthusiast Carin Froehlich have made global headlines. Steven speaks to Carin at her Pennsylvania farm house as she gives an insight into her ‘right-to-dry’ campaign which has gone to the state legislative. This campaign has already led to anonymous letters demanding that the campaign stop and her clothesline be removed! DRYING FOR FREEDOM will follow Carin’s campaign to pass her ‘right-to-dry’ bill which would make it illegal for communities to ban clotheslines throughout the state. Alexander Lee’s Project Laundry List has passed a similar bill in Florida, Maine and Vermont.

Intertwined with the fight for the ‘right-to-dry’ Steven investigates the history behind the clothesline ban and the increasing demand for electric dryers. This story starts in the 1950's when corporations profited from domestic growth by increasing our reliance on labour saving, energy consuming white goods, without any environmental considerations. In 1956 General Electric (GE) launched a marketing campaign encapsulating the post-war ‘More Power to America’ culture with the ‘Live Better Electrically’ campaign, increasing consumer demand for electricity. Through interviews with GE and archive footage, DRYING FOR FREEDOM will examine how this campaign played a major role in the undermining of domestic freedoms.