The Age of Stupid

The Age of Stupid (previously called Crude) is a film directed by Franny Armstrong (McLibel (film), Drowned Out) which takes a futuristic stance in order to show the impact of consumerism, oil consumption and war on the planet. Produced by the Academy Award winning John Battsek and starring Academy Award Nominee Pete Postlethwaite, the film will be on general release in February 2009.

Shot in seven countries over a period of three years, the film features six separate documentary stories, archive footage and lots of animation from, amongst others, Passion Pictures (who are the people behind the Gorillaz animation) - the elements and themes are bought together by the Archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) who looks back to the present day and asks: Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

The Age of Stupid was crowd-funded by 220 people who donated between £500 and £35,000 and will receive a pro-rata share in any profits, alongside the 105 crew who worked for survival wages.

You can see the reactions (and tears) of these crew and financiers here:

www.ageofstupid.net/video/making_of_crew_screening

The producers calculated the carbon footprint of the film to be 94,270KG CO₂ - which is the equivalent of 8 British people for one year or 4 Americans for one year or 1000 Tansanians for 1 year or 185 patio heaters for one month or running 1 large wind turbine for 6 days or recycling 910,000 bottles.

External Links

[http://www.ageofstupid.net The Official Age of Stupid Website]

[http://www.dragnerve.com The Official Dragnerve Website]

References

[http://jim.killock.org.uk/?p=32 Jim Killock's Blog]

Music

The heavy metal band ”Dragnerve” (www.dragnerve.com) licensed the track "A Life in Ashes" to the Age of Stupid film. This track is available on their myspace page (www.myspace.com/dragnerve). [http://www.myspace.com/dragnerve] , [(www.dragnerve.com)]