Although I previously wrote a little about climate change, I feel this is an area that I should explore in more detail. It’s an issue in the minds of almost everybody; we see it in the news and the media but what are they actually telling us? What is actually happening? What is actually being done about it? How does it affect us?
The next document I will look at is the film “The Age of Stupid’ (2009) by Franny Armstrong which explores the effects of climate change. The film is set in 2055, when the World has become a baron and hostile place due to climate change and looks back to the early 2000′s from the view of an archivist (played by Pete Postlethwaite), who protects a collection of data on the Worlds history, 300km off the coast of Norway, housed on a man-made platform out at sea. Searching through a touch-screen and voice interactive computer, he looks back at what could, and should have been done to save the World from the effects of climate change – before it became too late.
The film employs a hybrid of animation, fictional and actual television footage from the past, in a seamlessly endless database. The unnamed archivist descends upon the stories of six individuals in the 2000′s, and the radically different lives that the characters lead, influenced by the demand for oil. One man has launched a budget airline in India, allowing air travel to become accessable to all, but at massive costs to the environment. Another is a wind farm developer, passionate about renewable energy, yet keeps being knocked back by local people and their ‘nimbyism’ regarding the aesthetics of wind farms in their idyllic space. Another is a woman from Nigeria that suffers in poverty because of the oil supply her country yields, one of many that are becoming victims of the supply and demand trade. Another is a hero; a local man of New Orleans that rescued survivors of hurricane Katrina. Another is a French man that guides tours to the depleting glacier that has always been his home. The last is two Iraqi children who fled their homes and headed to Jordan for safety, losing their father and having to leave their older brother behind.
The story follows their agony and attempts at survival in the face of global devastation caused by the exploitation of the planet at the hands of the human race.
The film made its premiere on London’s Leicester Square in March 2009 from a solar powered tent, and was transmitted by satellite to another 62 cinemas around the UK. This marketing feat lead to a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest film premiere, due to the number of screens employed. Also, because the event was solar -powered, it was estimated by an independent assessor that the carbon emissions produced by the premiere reached a mere 1% of the normal level emitted during the premiere of a blockbuster movie.
Image Log Location=Moscow River, Moscow, Russia ISO=200 Aperture=f5.6 Shutter speed=1/80 White Balance=auto Delay=3″ Long=1″ Interval=2″ Date=23.12.09 Frame count:200
