Age of Stupid director attends screening and discussion

Franny Armstrong (UCL Zoology 1994), director of 'The Age of Stupid', participated in an audience discussion following the film's screening at UCL on 19 October 2009. 'The Age of Stupid', starring Pete Postlethwaite, is set in a post-apocalyptic 2055. It asks why, given the impending global disaster caused by climate change, present-day humanity did not choose to save itself by reducing carbon emissions. The event, exactly seven weeks before the start of the COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, was sponsored by UCL's Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities, in conjunction with Professor Jane Rendell (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture). Introducing the film, Professor Rendell noted the title of Franny Armstrong's UCL thesis was 'Is the human species suicidal?' She drew attention to the powerful message and format of the film (in which issues around climate change are personalised through the experiences of six groups of people) as well as its innovative funding and distribution models (?crowd funding? by hundreds of individuals and groups, with a return coming from licensed screenings).