It may have all begun with Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, but you know the green movement is truly cresting into the mainstream when Hollywood suddenly starts hosting environmentally-friendly events.
At the 22nd annual Tokyo International Film Festival, rather than sashaying across the traditional plush red carpet, attendees strolled down a green carpet made of recycled plastic bottles.
Moreover, green energy will be used for screenings throughout the nine-day event. Opening on Saturday, the festival is ecologically-oriented for the second year in a row, and Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama led off ceremonies, praising film as a more effective means of connecting people with nature than politics.
The festival will conclude with Disney/Pixar’s three-dimensional animated film, Up. But of the 270 movies in this year’s competition, the festival will feature films such as The Cove, a documentary lambasting the controversial slaughter of 2,000 dolphins each year in Taiji, Japan.
Meanwhile, the “Green Carpet Highlight” is James Cameron’s Avatar, starring Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, a sci-fi with the premise of humans beings living inside alien skins in order to survive on a distant planet. The festival opened with world premiere of Oceans, a French documentary about marine life by acclaimed filmmaker Jacques Perrin, which is sure to beat the pants off those in attendance.
You might call Hollywood the opiate of the masses. You might not. But at least the green-tinged variety of trends stem from substance and meaning. And these days, that’s as good a place to start as any.
Photo courtesy Heiwa4126 via Flickr