Artist greens up his act
ACCLAIMED character actor Pete Postlethwaite was in Sydney this week for Wednesday night’s premiere of his new film but he didn’t arrive in a limousine or live it large at any lavish after-parties.
Postlethwaite’s film, The Age of Stupid, a drama-documentary set in a world destroyed by climate change, aims to highlight environmental issues and its British premiere set records for the ”greenest” film event on record.
For the simultaneous Australian and New Zealand premieres, the film was shown at the same time in more than 40 cinemas, in order to save on the carbon dioxide emitted when people travel to one central location. Guests arrived on bicycles and in electric cars.
Oscar-nominated Postlethwaite plays the last man on Earth watching ”archive” footage from 2008 to seek answers as to why humanity didn’t stop the environmental damage being wrought on the planet. The footage is comprised of six interwoven documentaries made by the film’s director, Franny Armstrong (who also directed McLibel), and producer, Lizzie Gillett, illustrating the effects of climate change already being felt around the world.
It might seem an unlikely role for Postlethwaite, best known for films like In the Name of the Father and The Usual Suspects, but the British actor and his wife, Jacqui Morrish, live an eco-friendly existence in rural Shropshire. The pair have reduced their carbon footprint by installing a small wind turbine on their property, which produces so much electricity, it is fed back into the grid.
”Part of it stems from being a spendthrift,” jokes Postlethwaite. ”My wife is very much the green one … she’s been the prime mover.”
Postlethwaite was contacted by the filmmakers when they read about his wind turbine. In Britain, as in some parts of Australia, rural residents often petition against wind farms and one of the film’s strands follows a passionate wind farm developer battling an anti-wind farm lobby group.
”I can’t believe people complain about that – people say they’re unsightly but pylons are appalling and nobody seems to mind about that,” he says.
”It’s all this NIMBY attitude – people who say they’re behind it ‘but not in my backyard’.”
Alongside the wind turbine saga, the other stories are that of an Indian entrepreneur starting a discount airline, an elderly French mountain guide, a former Shell employee who rescued 100 people after Hurricane Katrina, two Iraqi siblings trying to find their brother and a Nigerian woman living in Shell’s most profitable oil region.
The film’s unique funding has been gaining as much coverage as its content – The Age of Stupid was made entirely using ”crowd funding”, raising £450,000 ($894,000) from 228 ‘’shareholders”, who ranged from big companies to local hockey clubs.
”It’s a real trendsetter, this film,” Postlethwaite says. ”It proves with imaginative thinking, you can do something like this. The filmmakers are a couple of amazing ladies.”
And the response in Britain has been ”very, very positive”, he says.
”Even the tabloid papers like The Sun are backing it. It’s the first time, in a way, that they’ve got involved in the environment, which is quite major.
”The important thing is that it’s obviously created some debate – if people are talking about climate change, it’s good.
”The number of people who have stopped me in the street to talk about the film is amazing – it’s usually people stopping me to talk about The Usual Suspects but now people have been telling me: ‘Thanks for making The Age of Stupid.”’
The powerful response has already led to governmental change. After the record-breaking British premiere, Postlethwaite, in a live broadcast, threatened to give back his OBE if a new coal power station was commissioned in Britain, resulting in a turnaround in government coal policy a month later.
After this week’s Australia-New Zealand premiere, the filmmakers are celebrating what’s billed as the film’s global premiere in the US, with Kofi Annan making a speech, Thom Yorke playing live and the film screening on more than 700 screens in more than 40 countries.
”I think there will be more people coming out of the film saying: ‘Man oh man, that was really moving, exciting, that was terrifying. What do we do?’ It’s all pretty exciting stuff.”
The Age of Stupid is showing now on selected release.
