Green Options

Things must be getting serious. At least for the planet and the environment. What else would explain the plethora of eco documentaries hitting the film festival circuit or that will hit mainstream theaters in the near future? Many of these green docu films cast a waving finger along with charts and graphs about what will happen to the planet in the future if we don’t act now. The Age of Stupid works a bit in reverse.

The Age of Stupid takes place in the year 2055 with a man called the Archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) sitting in a Noah’s Ark type storage tower with a collection of famous art, pairs of animals, and enough computer servers to make Google envious.  The tower exists because the world has turned into a fiery, and flood ridden disaster area. The Archivist  searches through archived video footage to see where man went wrong after having the opportunity to change things. The film takes futuristic standpoint of looking at the present (like right now).

Although the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival didn’t set out to program Green films, it may be no coincidence that several environment related or themed features and docs snuck their way into the diverse programming.

One of those films, first time director Aristomenis Tsirbas’s lushly animated Battle for Terra spotlights the peaceful planet of Terra where these wide-eyed tadpole looking denizens live. The Terrareans share the landscape (and skyscape) with sucking plants (a la Fantastic Planet) and flying whales in a healthy, peaceful environment - until the aliens attack. Only this time, humans represent the invaders complete with a jingoistic and aggressive mentality. The thing is that the humans used up all their resources back on Earth so then they decided to try their luck next door - Mars and Venus. Soon after colonizing the virgin neighbors, the three planets got into a battle royal and blew each other up so now the humans (in the form of Earth Force) need to take over the unspoiled Terra.