The Age of Stupid is the new cinema documentary from the Director of McLibel and the Producer of the Oscar-winning One Day in September, made by Spanner Films. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching ‘archive’ footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?, says the synopsis of the film on its official website.The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which had its world premier in London on March 15th 2009 and was released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009. The film will be released in Australia & New Zealand on August 19th, the global premier will be live from New York to 45 countries on September 21st 2009.

As you would have read above, the documentary is being premièred globally on the 21st (in US) and 22nd (in rest of the world) September, 2009. That’s next Monday/Tuesday. Hence I thought this was an appropriate time for me to focus the spotlight on it. Even though the documentary has been premièred in Australia in August, I haven’t yet gotten a chance to see it. I’m hoping to catch the live online broadcast from NY during the global premier. However, from the trailers I’ve watched and reviews I’ve read it seems like a very different take on the climate change issue. It weaves together 6 stories recorded in present day to make a fabric of human psyche. These are real people and not actors posing as someone. Fernand Pareau, 82-year old French mountain guide; Jeh Wadia, starting a low-cost airline in India; Alvin DuVernay, Shell oil man who rescued 100 people after Hurricane Katrina; Layefa Malemi, living in Shell’s most profitable oil region in Nigeria; Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud, two Iraqi refugee kids trying to find their brother and Piers Guy, a wind-farm developer fighting the anti wind-farm lobby in England … all show us different aspects of human mentality. The documentary does not set out to show us what we’ve already done to the planet because the assumption is we already know that. It, however, gives us a peak into the future that will be if we continue on our merry (?) way.

Another difference of this documentary from many others is that £450,000 of its budget was raised by crowd-funding – selling shares to individuals and groups. Film is therefore completely independent. The people’s contribution does not stop here. Even for the global premier people from various participating countries have organised their own Indie screenings to make it truly global. So for me this documentary also serves as a great example of how one can make a difference on a shoestring budget with support of other people who’re probably living on a shoestring budget themselves. I would strongly recommend all my readers to spread the word about The age of stupid and try to get as many people as you can to watch it. You can do your bit in many ways, organising your own screening, spread the word on social media, write a blog or at least watch it yourself.