"The Age Of Stupid" - 3/15 Premiere - Will Look Back At A World That Did Nothing About Climate

[hatrack]

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But this will be no ordinary film premiere. Armstrong's film, called The Age of Stupid, is getting the world's largest ever official premiere, with the whole evening being beamed by satellite direct to 65 cinemas. And because climate change affects everyone, too, it is being billed as "the people's premiere". "Not bad for a bunch of amateurs making it up as they go!" says Armstrong.

But Team Armstrong are no amateurs. For most of her 20s, she worked on McLibel - an epic, low-budget documentary about McDonald's hamfisted attempt to sue two penniless activists who defended themselves in the high court in the longest civil case in English history. The film has now been seen in 15 countries by 53 million people. There have been two other documentaries since but Stupid is very different - a mix of fact and fiction, using music and animation. It takes six real people in six countries and weaves together their personal experiences of oil. "We went to India, Nigeria twice, Jordan, Tuvalu, the Alps seven times, Cornwall, Iraq," she says. "We spent hours on boats right in the middle of the kidnap areas of the Niger delta. Just producer Lizzie Gillett on the sound and me on the camera. We shot 300 hours of film.

"We had a pretty much finished the film about a year ago, but when I watched it, I wasn't happy. I'd taken all these people's money and it wasn't good enough. So we brainstormed and decided to introduce a fictional element. At first I thought we could take the six characters and transpose them to a time in the future after an imaginary climate apocalypse. But our lawyer said they might sue. So we went for kids in the future. But no one wants to be berated by kids. So we ended up wanting someone older and we knew there was only one actor possible - Pete Postlethwaite."

They thought the Oscar-nominated Postlethwaite was way out of their league, but when they Googled him they found he was trying to get permission to put a wind turbine on his roof. It gave them the confidence to approach him. "I ended up directing Postlethwaite myself. He just rocked up and was awesome. I had my favourite actor speaking directly to me with a script that I had written." In the film, each of the six characters's real stories interlock and overlap with the others. Postlethwaite plays an old man looking back on all their lives and wondering why no one did anything about climate change when they had the chance.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/28/franny-armst...

[NYC_SKP]

1. I think this website tells the McLibel story as well as any:

http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/