PRESS PACK

SPAN FILMS

RNN

www.ageofstupid.net

PRODUCERLizzie Gillettlizzie@spannerfilms.net+44 (0)20 7383 0800www.spannerfilms.net

US PRESS CONTACTMeghan E. Gamber

Associate Vice President,Worldwide Film PublicityRogers & Cowan(310) 854-8134mgamber@rogersandcowan.com

INTERNATIONAL PRESS CONTACTSarah Wilby

45a Rathbone StreetLondon W1T 1NWt: +44 (0) 20 7580 0222 f: +44 (0) 20 7580 0333sarahwilby@swcp.co.uk

The new cinema documentary from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek (One Day In September, In The Shadow of the Moon). Pete Postlethwaite stars as an old man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking at “archive” footage from 2008, asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

Produced independently with a “crowd-funded” budget of £450,000, the 89 minute film has been released in cinemas in the UK and will be released around the world in September 2009.

The Global Premiere of the film will be broadcast live from a solar cinema in New York, with satellite links to 600+ cinemas in 40+ countries (some on delay).

REVIEWS

BASICS

“A Deeply Inconvenient Kick Up the Backside... you won’t see a more important film this year”

“Has enough attitude to power a large city... Slaps you round the face...then punches you in the stomach.”

“Compelling and constantly surprising... the first successful dramatisation of climate change to reach the big screen”

“Lectures us sternly and pitilessly - but also intelligently and provokingly”

“The most imaginative and dramatic assault on the institutional complacency shrouding the issue”

“Knocks spots off An Inconvenient Truth”

“Fabulously funny... heart-wrenching... visually stunning”

“Bold, supremely provocative, and hugely important...a cry from the heart as much as a roar for necessary change.”

DirectorProducer

Exective ProducerComposer

Production CompaniesStarring

Running TimeGenre

SubjectLocations

Shot onScreening Format

UK Release Global Premiere

Website

Franny ArmstrongLizzie GillettJohn BattsekChris BrierleySpanner Films & Passion PicturesPete Postelethwaite + 5 doc characters89 minsDocumentary - Drama - AnimationClimate change, oil, war & human stupidityAmerica, UK, India, Nigeria, Iraq,Jordan, The AlpsHD & HDVHDcam, Digi BetaMarch 2009September 2009www.ageofstupid.net

SYNOPSISSHORT (66 WORDS)‘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’. 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?

LONG (340 WORDS)‘The Age Of Stupid’ is the new documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek (One Day In September, Live Forever, In the Shadow of the Moon). Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055. He watches ‘archive’ footage from 2008 and asks: Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet by 2055. Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity’s achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again. Or that intelligent life may arrive and make use of all that we’ve achieved. He pulls together clips of “archive” news and documentary from 1950>2008 to build a message showing what went wrong and why. He focusses on six human stories:

< Alvin Duvernay, is a paleontogolist helping Shell find more oil off the coast of New Orleans. He also rescued more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina, which, by 2055, is well known as one of the first “major climate change events”.

> Jeh Wadia in Mumbai aims to start-up a new low-cost airline and gets a million Indians flying.

< Layefa Malemi lives in absolute poverty in a small village inNigeria from which Shell extracts tens of millions of dollars worth of oil every week. She dreams of becoming a doctor, but must fish in the oil-infested waters for four years to raise the funds.

> Jamila Bayyoud, aged 8, is an Iraqi refugee living on the streets of Jordan after her home was destroyed - and father

killed - during the US-led invasion of 2003. She’s trying to help her elderbrother make it across the border to safety.

< Piers Guy is a windfarm developer from Cornwall fightingthe NIMBYs of Middle England.

> 82-year-old French mountain guide Fernand Pareau haswitnessed his beloved Alpine glaciers melt by 150 metres.

THE PEOPLE’S PREMIERE The Age Of Stupid, the new cinema documentary from the Director of McLibel had it’s UK Premiere on March 15th 2009 in a solar cinema tent in the middle of London’s Leicester Square, and simultaneously at 62 cinemas, setting a new Guinness World Record in the process. The star of the film, Pete Postlethwaite, arrived by bicycle before posing for the papparazzi on the green carpet. Other celebs and high profile guests, including Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, Will Young and the Government Minister for climate change, arrived on foot, by bicycle, public transport or biodiesel cars (chip fat from local Leicester Square chippies was collected by youth volunteers to power the vehicles).

The premiere was not plugged into any mains power with the entire event being successfuly powered by solar panels resulting in only 1% of the carbon emissions of a normal Hollywood style premiere. (See eco fact on next page).

The People’s Premiere also generated a huge amount of mainstream press coverage, took £70,000 GBP in one day, inspired people to change their lives and enabled ten thousand people to see the film simultaneously.

Along with all the print and online articles, the best of which are included in this press pack, the event also featured on the following TV programmes: Channel 4 News, Sky News, BBC News, ten minutes on BBC Newsnight, Richard & Judy, BBC Breakfast, and the Today programme.

PETE POSTLETHWAITE

ARRIVING BY BIKE >

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ageofstupid.net

THE 1% EVENT5 TONNESOF CARBONDIOXIDE GAS

FREE BIKE REPAIR

SERVICE ON SITE

500 TONNESOF A TYPICAL RED CARPET PREMIERE

The Age of Stupid premiere will result in just 1% of the CO2 emissions of a regular blockbuster premiere:

VS.

ROLL UP, ROLL UP

Our Green Travel Plan is guiding people to and from the premiere in low carbon style,

be it on foot, bicycle (zero carbon), bus or train (low carbon). Anyone coming by car

must have a full car-load - no single passengers. We are enforcing a no-fly-zone

around the premiere: If just one of our celebs were to fly in to London from LA they

would emit as much CO2 as the entire rest of the event.

Our celebs are rolling up in a fleet of zero carbon wheels:a Lotus Elise running on landfill gas - three electric G-Wiz cars - a Tesla Roadster, an all electric sports car, capable of 0-60mph in 4 seconds and straight from the labs of Cambridge Uni: the UK’s first road legal solar car

Front row seats made

from recycled London

papers.

Cars powered by

used chip fat

No plastic cups.

The fence cover for the event is made from re-used fair trade coffee sacks.

All printed material

uses recycled paper and

vegetable inks.

””

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

PRODUCTION NOTES

Either we seriously tackle climate change or we wipe out most life on Earth. The future of our species and everything we have ever achieved is at stake, so it’s not a tricky decision, as a filmmaker, to decide which subject to work on. The original plan, back in 2002, was to borrow the structure of Stephen Soderbergh’s movie “Traffic”: six human stories on all sides of a complex international issue. “Traffic” was fiction/drugs and “Crude” (working title) was going to be documentary/oil.

I hooked up with producer John Battsek and agreed we needed a decent budget to make such an ambitious film, but that we also wanted to remain utterly independent. So we came up with a scheme we called “crowd-funding”. The complete budget of 450,000 UK pounds was raised by selling “shares” to individuals and groups – including a hockey team and a health centre – who care about climate change. Our 228 investors gave between 500 and 35,000 pounds and each own a percentage of profits of the film, as do the crew, who worked at massively reduced rates. Which leaves us in the powerful position of owning all the rights. My first two films – McLibel and Drowned Out – have together been watched by 55 million viewers worldwide, and we are planning to smash that record with Stupid. After three years simultaneously following six different stories in six wildly-different locations - New Orleans, Nigeria, UK, The Alps, India, Jordan – we held some test screenings of the rough cut. This was May 2007. Disaster. Only people obsessed with climate change could understand all our subtle links. To everyone else it was a hodgepodge of random stories. After despairing a while, I decided to introduce a fictional character, living in 2055, when the planet has been devastated and hundreds of millions of people killed. He is trawling through “archive” footage fromnow, trying to work out why we didn’t stop climate change when we still had the chance. There was only ever one actor in my mind and when I googled “Pete Postlethwaite + climate change” and learnt he was setting up a wind turbine in his garden, I thought we might just have a hope of persuading him... Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth did a fantastic job at bringing the public up-to-speed on the science of climate. The Age of Stupid takes the baton from Gore and examines the moral, psychological and human consequences of our current way of life. We calculated the film’s carbon footprint by recording every journey - by foot, bicycle, motor boat, rowing boat, plane, train, car, rickshaw and helicopter - as well as all the electricity, gas, food and equipment used. It added up to 94 tonnes, which is equivalent to four Americans for a year or 185 patio heaters for a month. I definitely think our filmis worth 185 patio heaters.

Franny first thought of the idea for Crude (as it was known then) back in 2002. The plan was to borrow the structure from Stephen Soderbergh’s film ‘Traffic’: six interweaving stories circling the drugs trade and refusing to supply easy answers. But where Traffic was about drugs, Crude would be about oil and climate change.

In 2004 Franny signed up the UK’s top documentary producer, John Battsek, with the aim of channeling his contacts and experience into a mainstream hit. John won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2001, with his very first feature documenatary, One Day in September. Since then, he’s produced a brace of commercially successful docs on subjects ranging from American moon landings and British pop music to Bolivian tin mining and Korean gymnastics. He loves to fully capitalise on a great film, by releasing soundtrack albums, merchandise and books. He has sold his films for international theatrical release to Miramax, Pathe, Sony Classics and Paramount, to name a few. John responded to Franny’s 30 second pitch for Crude with “Love it. Let’s do it.”

Franny and John were determined to produce Crude/The Age of Stupid independently, in order to give them both full editorial freedom and complete control of the distribution. They came up with the “crowd-funding” film financing model. Essentially, ‘shares’ were sold to raise the budget, and all crew work at massively reduced rates to keep costs low - but they also received a percentage. This way the production could not only remain editorially and distributionarily independent, but any profits accrued would be shared amongst the people who made the film (the crew), the people who funded it (the investors), the organisations that supported it (the production companies) and the people in it (the stars). The first Funding Event was held in Dec 2004, offering 100 ‘shares’ of £500 each. In one of the most terrifying experiences of the film - scarier even than being held in a kidnap village in Nigeria - Franny stood up and explained the idea for the film to 30 punters in a screening room in Soho. They sold the first thirteen ‘shares’ that night, which put £17,500 in the kitty, more than enough for low-budget filmmakers to get started. One of the key advantages of crowd-funding, we later realised, is that you do not have to wait to secure a complete budget before you start.

Franny was side-tracked for the first half of 2005 with re-editing her documentary McLibel to feature length for broadcast on BBC2, followed by UK and US theatrical releases.

Lizzie Gillett had been working for Franny on other projects since 2002 but in Oct 2004 she joined the Stupid team. Starting as an admin assistant, she quickly made herself invaluable and eventually took over the day-to-day producing role, with John becoming the Executive Producer. In June, Franny and Lizzie bought a Sony Z1 HDV camera and set off to find their first character at the Paris Air Show. They were on a mission to find one of the new breed of Indian entrepreneurs busily starting up low-cost airlines. After several weeks of research, Jeh Wadia - a 33 year old Indian from a wealthy family launching a new airline called Go Air - became the firm favourite and was soon signed up.

Over the next 15 months the pair travelled to 6 countries and found the stars of the film; Layefa in Nigeria, Fernand in the Alps, Piers in Cornwall, Jamila & Adnan in Jordan, Al in New Orleans and Jeh in India. They spent many weeks filming in each location, visiting each character between two and seven times over the next two years.

WHERE TRAFFIC

WAS ABOUT DRUGS, CRUDE

WOULD BE ABOUT OIL AND CLIMATE

CHANGE.

The relentless filming schedule soon drained the bank balance, so Funding Round 2 was launched in Feb 2006, with 40 ‘shares’ of £5,000 each. More and more investors appeared from nowhere as word spread. Over the next two years, the 40 shares were gradually sold and the complee £450k raised. There are now 223 investors from the UK, Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Holland, Denmark and France. The investors each own a percentage of the film - as do the crew, who are working for massively reduced rates - and will be paid once a year for ten years.

In March 2007, Franny and editor David Hill (who had cut McLibel) emerged with a 90 minute rough cut which interwove the documentary stories, as planned. However, it was felt that the film wasn’t greater than the sum of its parts and that most of the themes were too subtle for the average viewer to fully appreciate. The production entered a dark few months of brain-wracking until the idea eventually emerged to set the film in the future, with fictional character(s) observing the documentary characters from a distance, and reflecting on the barriers that stand in the way of us halting climate change. This also allowed the film to explicitly show what the future will be if we continue as we are.

Over an intensive 4 month script-writing process this idea developed into a scenario in the year 2055, during apocalyptic runaway climate change, with two teenagers living in The Global Archive, a storage facility in the Arctic protecting all of humanities achievements from the ravages of climate change, in the hope that intelligent life might evolve - or arrive - and be able to make use of what we have learned.

The rough cut was tested to a select group of friends, investors and crew at the Curzon Soho Cinema in September 2007. Franny and Assistant Editor Andy (aged 35 and 42 respectively) played the teenagers in the future, as a stand-in test before proper actors were cast. In one of the low-points of the production, there was a largely negative reaction.

So the teenagers got dumped. But the future idea was felt to be very strong, so, two days of brainstorming later, a variation was invented and subsequently tested. This time, Franny’s dad played an old man in the future. He represented the 30-something generation now, aged 70-something in 2055, looking back with sorrow and regret at everything they didn’t do to stop climate change. Rather than the next generation berating us for destroying the planet, this version was dramatically much more successful. Though Franny’s dad is no actor, the emotion of the scenario was plain for all to see.

Franny’s all-time favourite actor, and the only person she would consider for the role of “The Archivist” is In The Name of the Father’s Pete Postlethwaite. Stephen Speilberg called him the “best actor in the world” and John had worked with him on a previous production and had got on famously. Franny googled “Pete Postelthwaite +climate change” and was thrilled to find out that not only was Pete in the middle of a comprehensive eco-renovation of his house, including installing a home turbine, but he was quoted as saying ‘it is every single person’s responsibility to do what they can to stop climate change’. On Dec 17 2007 at 3.27pm, Pete said ‘Yes’.

The drama scenes with Pete were shot on Jan 24th 2008, in a carpet warehouse in Willesden, hastily converted into a futuristic storage facility by production designer David Bryan and his team.

Once it was decided that Pete would be looking through all of the media ever produced by humanity, the archive possibilities span out of control. We first approached ITN Source with a proposed deal whereby we had complete access to all their archive (which includes Reuters, Pathe and CBS), in exchange for a token upfront fee and a percentage of profits.Unbelievably, they said yes. We then headed to the BBC Motion Gallery, but were turned away, as the BBC would never agree to such a deal. Two days later, they got in touch to say that a big boss somewhere up the system had overruled their decision and we received our magic BBC login.

Franny wanted to stay as far away from traditional documentary styling as possible. In particular, this meant no talking heads and no commentary (both rules were of course later broken, to a small extent). She decided to use animated pieces to explain key concepts and background material. As Pete would be pulling these animations from the archive, they needed to be a wide range of styles and tones, as though they’d come from a variety of sources. The production advertised for animators and soon had a team of 18 boys, all a little blue for lack of sunlight, beavering away mostly in their bedrooms, producing what became one of the film’s most impressive elements.

For the music, the intention was always to write a Star Wars-esque orchestral score, which the composer, Chris Brierley, slightly balked at. So he came back with something better and then pulled together all his orchestral friends for a recording session in a donated studio that one of our investors happened to own. We also attempted to clear about 15 famous pop songs, but only succeeded with Just Cant Get Enough, Boots Are Made For Walking and Radiohead’s Reckoner.

One of the first public sneak previews of the film was in the UK Parliament, where it was said by insiders to be the most well attended event apart from the Campaign for Real Ale launch (and they gave out free beer). It has since screened at the EU, Dutch, Welsh, and Scottish Parliaments and has screenings lined up with Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Foundation (where he is hosting the panel debate), the WHO, Obama’s thinktank, the UN, the Edinburgh & London film festivals, and the BBC.

The Age of Stupid production is responsible for 94 tonnes of Co2.

A FRIGHTENING VISION: THE GLOBAL ARCHIVE>

SHE DECIDED TO

USE ANIMATED PIECES TO EXPLAIN

KEY CONCEPTS AND BACKGROUND

MATERIAL

NEWS OF THE WORLD

< MARCH 15 2009

THE SUN

FEBRUARY 18 2009 >

THE SUN

FEBRUARY 18 2009 >

LA TIMES<JULY 17 2009

NY TIMESJULY 17 2009>

THE TIMES

MARCH 19 2009 >

THE GUARDIAN

< MARCH 16 2009

THE SYDNEY

MORNING HERALDAUGUST 19 2009 ^

THE COURIER

MAILAUGUST 17 2009 >

THE NY TIMES

AUGUST 13 2009 ^

THE AGE

AUGUST 21 2009 >

THE LISTENER

AUGUST 17 2009 >

METRO

< MARCH 16 2009

FINANCIAL TIMES

MARCH 19 2009 >

THE INDEPENDENT

< MARCH 12 2009

TIME OUT

MARCH 19 2009 >

THE SUN

< MARCH 13 2009

SIGHT & SOUND

APRIL 2009 >

EVENING STANDARD

MARCH 19 2009

THE BIG ISSUE

MARCH 16 2009 >

THE GUARDIAN

FEBRUARY 28 2009 >

CROWD-FUNDED

DIRECTOR FRANNY ARMSTRONG

CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS

The film is “crowd-funded”. Meaning we raised the cash by selling “shares”to 223 individuals and groups. The groups range from a hockey team and a women’s health centre. This is mostly to give it the best chance of reaching a mainstream multiplex audience, but also to retain complete editorial control. The £450k budget for The Age of Stupid was raised by selling ‘shares’ to people who care about climate change. These investors all own a percentage of the film - as do the crew, who are working for massively reduced rates. If the film makes as much money as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 - admittedly the biggest grossing documentary of all time - an initial £500 investment would recoup about £60,000. On the other hand, if it makes as much as Franny’s film Drowned Out, a £500 investment would recoup only £50. But whatever the film’s box office take, every investor in The Age of Stupid will know that they have supported a film that will hopefully be a significant landmark in the ongoing battle against climate change.

Franny’s first documentary, McLibel (1997, 2005), told the inside story of the infamous McDonald’s libel trial. Filmed over ten years with no commission, no budget and a voluntary crew - including Ken Loach, who directed the courtroom reconstructions - it shot to notoriety after getting stopped by lawyers at first BBC1 and then Channel 4 on its first release in 1997. Eight years later - after the ‘McLibel Two’ had defeated the British government at the European Court of Human Rights - it was finally broadcast on BBC2, to excellent viewing figures (1 million at 10.30pm on Sunday) and fantastic reviews. It was then broadcast on TV in 15 countries - including Australia, Canada & America - and released on DVD worldwide. Cinema Libre distributors released McLibel in American cinemas and DVD stores in Summer 2005 and Revelation followed in the UK in 2006. McLibel was nominated for (but never won) numerous awards, including the Grierson Documentary Award and the British Independent Film Awards.

EQUIVALENT TO:> 8 British people for 1 year

> 4 American people for 1 year

> 1000 Tanzanians people for 1 year

> 91 people living sustainably for 1 year

> 1 of Piers’ big turbines for 6 days

> Recycling 910,000 bottles

> 15 British homes for 1 year

> 18 American cars for 1 year

> 185 gas patio-heaters for one month

48 flights, 124,000 milesFood for 1,277 meals

Train trips, 23,612 milesBoat trips, 497 miles

Cameras, computers, tapes, CDs etcHeating two offices ( pretty cold)2 helicopter flights, 105 minutes

Car trips, 2400 milesTubes & buses, 1,480 miles

Bicycle & walking trips,13,100 milesElectricity (green supplier)

TOTAL

68,100 Kg C02 3,400 KgC02 4,100 Kg C023,200 Kg C022,800 Kg C021,100 Kg CO2735 Kg C02740 Kg C0295 Kg C020 Kg C020 Kg C02

94,270kg CO2

THE £450K BUDGET

WAS RAISED BY SELLING SHARES TO PEOPLE WHO

CARE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

DIRECTOR FRANNY ARMSTRONG

It was recently picked as one of only two UK films in the the British Film Institute’s prestigious series, Ten Documentaries Which Changed The World (the other being no less than Michael Buerk’s Ethopia report, which led to Live Aid).

Franny’s second feature doc, Drowned Out (2002), follows an Indian family who choose to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam. It too sold to TV round the world, was nominated for ‘Best Documentary’ at the British Independent Film Awards 2004 and was released theatrically in America and on DVD worldwide in 2006.

With zero backing from the UK TV industry, Franny’s films have been seen by more than 56 million people.

REVIEWS

“An irresistible David and Goliath tale...you can’t help but cheer along” Seattle Times

“Truly, hilariously dramatic” San Francisco Weekly on McLIBEL

“Instructive, exciting and often hilarious.... first-rate” The Observer on McLIBEL

“More rousing than anything Hollywood could come up with.” Channel 4 on McLIBEL

“The sort of film Michael Moore probably thinks he makes” Sunday Times on McLIBEL

“Absolutely unmissable” The Guardian on McLIBEL

“Edge of the seat stuff. Terrific.” BBC on McLIBEL

“Angry, compassionate, disturbing and yet empowering” Time Out on DROWNED OUT

“Documentaries rarely, if ever, come better than this” Bermuda Royal Gazette on DROWNED OUT

“A beacon to the grassroots filmmaking community” International Doc Mag on FRANNY

“In a few years time, Franny Armstrong [will be] being discussed as one of the key documentary film-makers of our generation” DVD Outsider

“Insatiable... inspiring... revolutionary.... your hero” Channel 4 on FRANNY

FILMOGRAPHY

THE AGE OF STUPID 2004-2008 Pete Postlethwaite stars in this ambitious documentary set in the future, looking back at us now and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

MCLIBEL 2005, 75 mins Updated and extended version of McLibel released theatrically in the US, UK, Austria. Broadcast on BBC4 and BBC2 in 2005. Has also sold to 33 TV stations around the world.

THE DAMMED 2003, 45 mins Shorter, updated Drowned Out, made for PBS and sold worldwide.

DROWNED OUT 2002, 75 mins An Indian family choose to drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam. Also being released theatrically in the US and on DVD worldwide. Screened on Al Jazeera International Feb 2007.

BAKED ALASKA 2001, 26 mins America’s coldest state is warming ten times faster than the rest of the world. So why drill for more oil under the ice? Sold to TVworldwide (and continuing to sell well). Winner of many festival awards.

””

“The stakes are very, very high. They’re through the roof. So when I looked at the subject and what the film is trying to do, there was no option really. I had to do it.” PETE POSTLETHWAITE

“This film’s not quite as big as Jurassic Park, but it’s lovely to be on a set where people really want to be there and are committed to what they’re doing.” PETE POSTLETHWAITE

“Four years is pretty long to make a single documentary, but in terms of the task in hand - preventing the extinction of our species forever - it doesn’t seem too bad a use of our time.” FRANNY ARMSTRONG

“Age of Stupid is the most ambitious film I’ve been involved with to date. Filmed over four years, five central characters, an on-screen narrator plus a huge animation element, it is a credit to all the team that, despite the many challenges combining all these elements, the film successfully carries the intended message. ” JOHN BATTSEK

QUOTES

AWARDS

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