Franny Armstrong, director of the documentary ‘Age of Stupid’, and founder of the new 10:10 campaign that encourages people to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% by 2010, has spoken to the Guardian newspaper about the climate change problem, why she made a film about such a problem, and the importance of continued action in the field of the arts on matters of such importance.
Armstrong stated that,
“But didn’t Al Gore already make the climate change documentary?” has been a common question over the five years we’ve been making The Age of Stupid. It never fails to raise a weary smile. Casablanca had already done love, so why bother with Brokeback Mountain? Apocalypse Now did war. What’s the point of Three Kings?
Love and war will soon become minor concerns, as the full horrors of climate change begin to unfold…in my not very humble opinion we need more, not fewer, films about every aspect of the climate crisis and how we might yet solve it. Inconvenient Truth did the science. Fantastic. 11th Hour investigated climate change alongside its non-identical twin, peak oil. No Impact Man gets on to practical solutions from an individual’s perspective and The Power of Community does the same at the community level. Our film, The Age of Stupid, focuses on the big moral human stuff“.
The film, which opens worldwide next week, and is being supported by a number of public figures, including musician Thom Yorke, who will close off the première of the film with live music, has received praise for its treatment of the climate change problem, and the continued endeavours of its director in the 10:10 campaign.
It will be broadcast across the world, and is being touted as the most influential documentary in the field. But Armstrong is hesitant when it comes to discussing the impact of the film, and instead took a chance to place more pressure on the world leaders who will meet at Copenhagen:
And if we do reach 250m people, and the majority of them do agree with the film’s key thesis – that unless we move very, very fast we will make the planet uninhabitable – then so what? What influence could 250m angry, inspired, motivated citizens possibly have in 2009, the year of the Copenhagen climate summit, when the governments of the world will come together in December to finalise the successor to the Kyoto treaty?
Her playful answer will, let us hope, reach the ears of the world’s politicians, come December.
