Media for a Playful Planet
NOW PLAYING! is a television documentary about the vital importance of play to our happiness, well-being, and the future of life. It reveals how foundational play is to every area of life.
Play isn't just kid's stuff; it's vitally important to our individual and collective well being. And yet we continue to over schedule, over protect, and over test our children, while shrinking our own playtime to the size of a crumb. Can we really suppress our need to play and not pay a deadly serious price? The answer is a resounding NO. The cost of chronic play-deprivation includes depression, mental illness, obesity, ADHD, increased violence, inflexibility, lack of social skills, and diminished imagination, creativity and innovation. We stop playing at our peril.
And more and more of us are realizing it. We're leaving our cubicles and our suburban kitchens, our high pressure, work-obsessed lives and we're heading to maker spaces, public pillow fights, and flash mobs. We're turning parking lots into soccer fields, crosswalks into hopscotch games, and filling potholes with miniature gardens. The signs are everywhere. Play is bursting through the cracks like wild dandelions in spring. And not a moment too soon!
An Open Eye Pictures sponsored project
In production
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”