Posted by: If you haven’t heard of the Age of Stupid, this may be your last week to be in the dark, as next week isn’t going to be your usual NGO campaign. The epic film, asks a seemingly simple question, with Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite staring as a historian who "looks back" on real footage from 2008 to try to answer the question, "why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?"
The film follows a number of people around the world, documentary style, who are at that brittle edge between the dirty energy economy and climate change and the possibilities of a clean energy future. However, what makes this film so unusual is not that it is a sci-fi, global environmental documentary (I know!) but how it has been made and promoted. The making of the film and it’s promotion has been a massive crowd-sourced effort, with individuals chipping in to pay for specific bits of the budget, with 228 individuals and groups - including a hockey team and a women's health centre – investing £450,000 to pay for it all.
Now, they are on track to set a Guinness World Record. Next week, the Age of Stupid, a TckTckTck partner, is hosting one of the most unusual events in climate history, with a one-night only screening and broadcast at over 700 cinemas in over 55 countries, with audiences you wouldn’t believe showing up.
In Vanuatu, the pacific island already losing fertile land to rising seas, they are showing the films on a screen made by a local sailmaker. The pacific island Kiribati is hosting the film in a 5,000-seater stadium. Celebrities like Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Heather Graham, Moby, and Kofi Annan are showing up for the Global Premiere that will be streamed all around the world via satellite.
However, it won’t just be the premiere that will be broadcast by satellite to the 700 global screenings. TckTckTck partner Greenpeace has a team currently hiking up the tallest mountains in the world, to broadcast live from a melting glacier in the Himalayas, while another team will broadcast from the Amazon. TckTckTck partner Oxfam is making a human-powered aerial animation that will also be seen by moviegoers worldwide.
So, head to your Age of Stupid screening and you won’t just catch a movie, you will catch a glimpse of a huge and growing social movement in action.
The Age of Stupid was number one at the box office in the U.K. this spring, and their one-night event is poised to break the Guinness World Record for biggest simultaneous film screening. Let’s hope that the Age of Stupid isn’t just a box office smash, a possibility now that MoveOn.org is on board, but the opening to a season of unprecedented civil society engagement that breaks through the negotiating deadlock that many are threatening is happening at the United Nations.