Film: HOW TO START YOUR OWN COUNTRY April 2, 2011

Part of the Wisconsin Film Festival.

DESCRIPTION: What makes a country a country? A nation a nation? And what’s to stop you from starting your own? In a globe-hopping search for an answer to these fundamental but little understood questions of sovereignty, How To Start Your Own Country visits six micronations: unrecognized self-declared entities that you will not find on a political map. The oldest is the Principality of Seborga, a sovereign state since 954 AD. This Ligurian hill town of Seborga was included in the 1861 founding of the Italian Republic — but without the agreement of the locals, who elected a new prince in 1965 to reassert sovereignty. One of the more atraditional nations here is the Principality of Sealand, where Prince Roy and his family lives on a WWII gun tower eight miles off the coast of England. Looking to the future, the Seasteading Institute is signing up pioneers for the ocean-going, self-sustaining platform world founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson. With interviews which very seriously open the question of what it takes to be recognized as a sovereign state by the global community, to Prince Leonard of Australia’s Hutt River Province stamping passports for busloads of tourists, this film is provocative and thoroughly delightful.

Canada, 2010, 72 mins, video, dir. Jody Shapiro

In English. Wisconsin Premiere.

Official Website: http://www.wifilmfest.org