On Tuesday,along with other cities in over 40 countries,Mumbai will learn how not to be stupid. The lesson is scheduled to begin at 7 pm when the The Age of Stupid,a futuristic documentary-drama-animation on climate change directed by UK-based director Franny Armstrong will be premiered at Blue Frog in Lower Parel,along with screens in cities like Berlin,Buenos Aires,Turkey and Thailand across Europe,Asia,the Middle East and the US. The documentary-drama-animation hybrid starring Oscar-nominated Hollywood actor Pete Postlethwaite (of the The Usual Suspects fame),traces the life of an old man the only man alive in the year 2055,when runaway climate change would have ravaged the planet. Once known as the founder of The Global Archive,a storage facility located in the now-melted Arctic,which preserves all of humanitys achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again,the film sees the man pulling together clips of archive news and documentary from 1950 to 2008. Together,the clips convey the message of what went wrong and why. It focuses on six human stories,one of them being the tale of Jeh Wadia in Mumbai aiming to start a new low-cost airline and gets a million Indians flying,according to the synopsis of the film. Armstrong,who first thought of the film in 2002 borrowing a structure from Stephen Soderberghs film Traffic,explained,Our response to climate change will define our generation,in the same way that ending apartheid,overturning slavery or landing on the moon defined earlier generations. At the moment,we are The Age of Stupid,but there is just about still time to turn things around. The film was made with cash raised from crowd-funding a concept of selling shares to 223 individuals and groups in UK interested in the issue of climate change. About 450,000 pounds were collected by funding,a film representative said from UK. Digressing from the traditional documentary vehicle,Armstrong has used animated pieces to explain key concepts and background materials. Even as the film was being made,the team counted their carbon footprints. About 94,270 kgs of CO2 was spent in making the film. In Mumbai,as the film waits to release at Blue Frog,CEO Simran Mulchandani agrees,We are facing a moral issue to examine our impact on the environment,rectify it to the extent we practically and honestly can. We need to wake people up to the terrifying consequences we would face if we fail to do this. We at Blue Frog want to an agent of change in this battle for humanity. The screening of The Age of Stupid is our first step in this direction.
