[Scpg] "Age of Stupid" film/event Mon Sept 21 at Arlington

[LBUZZELL at aol.com]

_http://www.ageofstupid.net/screenings/cinemas/1715_ 
(http://www.ageofstupid.net/screenings/cinemas/1715) 
 
On Monday, Sept 21 a new British film, "The Age of Stupid," will have its  
global premiere, including an 8 pm screening at the Arlington Theater in 
Santa  Barbara.  In the US, the hip, youth-oriented, 
drama-documentary-animation  movie on “climate change, oil, war, politics, consumerisim and human 
stupidity”  will launch from a solar-powered cinema tent in New York live to 
over 400 movie  theaters across the country, timed for the day before the UN’s 
climate meeting  on Sept 22nd, when 80 heads of state – and therefore the 
world’s media – will  gather in New York.
 
Following the screening, there will be a 40-minute live event featuring  
Kofi Annan, actress Gillian Anderson, the film’s director Franny Armstrong and 
 star, Oscar-nominated British actor Pete Postlethwaite. Audiences will 
also hear  from scientists working in the Himalayas and the Indonesian rain 
forest via live  satellite link.  A group of children will speak from the very 
room in  Copenhagen in which all our futures will be decided at the UN 
climate summit in  December, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke will wrap up the evening 
with a short  acoustic performance.
 
Why all the hullabaloo?  Many believe this could be the next, far  hipper “
An Inconvenient Truth.” Pete Postlethwaite (“In the Name of the Father,”  “
Brassed Off") stars as a man born in the 2000s, now living alone in the  
devastated world of 2055, looking back at “archive” footage from 2007 and 
asking  why we didn’t stop climate change when we still had a chance? 
 
Why were we so “stupid”?
 
The 92 minute film was filmed on location in America, the UK, India,  
Nigeria, Iraq, Jordan and the Alps. In addition to Postlethwaite, it “stars” a  
92-year old French mountain guide, an entrepreneur starting a low-cost 
airline  in India, a Shell oil man who rescued 100 people after Hurricane 
Katrina, an  African woman living in Shell’s most profitable oil region in Nigeria 
and two  Iraqi refugee kids trying to find their brother.
 
On August 12, 2009 the New York Times commented on the unique way this film 
 is being distributed:
 
"Quentin Tarantino never had to go through this.
 
"When “The Age of Stupid,” a climate change movie, “opens” across the  
United States in September, it will play on some 400 screens in a one-night  
event, with a video performance by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, all paid for by 
the  filmmakers themselves and their backers. In Britain, meanwhile, the film 
has  been showing via an Internet service that lets anyone pay to license a 
copy, set  up a screening and keep the profit."
 
(_http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/media/13independent.html?_r=1_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/media/13independent.html?_r=1) )
 
Is this the kind of media it will take to help people around the world wake 
 up to our precarious situation?  And if it is, will we take the next steps 
 towards intelligent action?
 
For more information: _www.ageofstupid.net_ (http://www.ageofstupid.net/) 
 
Linda

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