The Age Of Stupid
The Age of Stupid Premier
It’s not every day one gets to go to a film premier, but it’s never that one gets to go to a premier quite like this…
As you would expect for any self respecting film premier in the UK there was a showing in Leicester square, but I actually mean Leicester square it’s self, the square was taken over by solar panels, bicycles, low carbon cars, a tent made of old sacks and of course all the celebrity.It was also the first People’s premier; this meant that everyone in the UK had the opportunity to take part, making it one of the largest premier events ever.
I was in one of the 65 cinemas that had a live HD satellite link up with the events going on in Leicester square, with members from the Age of Stupid team present to link us up further. There were interviews with people coming down the green carpet, clips of the preparations and the kind of backstage view where you hear people chatting away.
The Director then introduced the film:
The Film – Out March the 20th 2009
The film is set in 2055 where the lack of action in our generation has caused the effects of climate change to go out of control, an archivist played by Spielberg’s favourite actor Pete Postlethwaite (the only fictional character) is trying to compile the story of where it all went wrong for humanity. This sees him at his futuristic library console working to produce a sequence of video which contains the story of a few selected people. All from different corners of the world, who one way or another are linked by climate change. All the clips shown are real documentary taken from our history and current affairs.
The film doesn’t use statistics or predictions to show the affects and causes of climate change, we’re at the stage where it can just honestly show peoples’ stories and the increasingly facile dilemmas of modern life to convey how we’re walking into serious problems.
The peoples’ stories:
Fernand Pareau, 82-year old French mountain guide (documentary)
Jeh Wadia, starting a low-cost airline in India (documentary)
Alvin DuVernay, Shell oil man who rescued 100 people after Hurricane Katrina (documentary)
Layefa Malemi, living in Shell’s most profitable oil region in Nigeria (documentary)
Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud, two Iraqi refugee kids trying to find their brother (documentary)
Piers Guy, a wind farm developer fighting the anti wind farm lobby in England (documentary)
The film and premier was produced with as little environmental impact as possible and it’s estimated to have a carbon footprint 1% of the size of an average film. The full carbon footprint breakdown is available on their website.
The Film is really powerful, it’s one of those rare moments where after the film ends you just stay silently frozen to your seat in awe. The lush graphics, the excellent acting by Pete and the reality of the stories makes this film, as cliché as it is, totally unmissable.
So what now ? – It’s all well and good watching a film about climate change that we’re responsible for, but we actually need to DO something, prove that we’re NOT stupid.
A really important date is coming up; the national climate march on Saturday the 5th December 2009 where a few days later the successor to the Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen is going to be drawn up. We need to make the politicians know that we want them to act. This is where the Not Stupid campaign comes in.
This is a campaign for everyone. Because it has to be. Go to http://www.notstupid.org to sign up. You can find your local Campaign against climate change group at http://www.campaigncc.org/.
You’ve got to be stupid not to.