UALR Public Radio, The Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN), and William F. Laman Library invite the public to a free advance screening of "The Island President" as part of Community Cinema Tuesday, Apr. 2, at 6:30 p.m.
ABOUT THE FILM
“The Island President” lifts the issue of global warming out of the theoretical and into the personal. President Mohamed Nasheed is trying to prevent 385,000 people from drowning. His nation of 1,200 low-lying islands, the Maldives, is sinking into the Indian Ocean as sea levels rise due to global warming. Climate change experts say that some of the islands will be submerged within 20 years, threatening the lives of the largely impoverished inhabitants, as well as inundating the lavish resorts that dot the islands. Nasheed’s unprecedented contingency plan is to move his entire population to a new homeland. As he conducts serious discussions about this with Sri Lanka and Australia, Nasheed is doing all he can to prevent this looming disaster by trying to convince world leaders to halt global warming.
Filmmakers received exclusive access to follow Nasheed as he prepared over several months for the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. The terms of the 1997 Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change were about to expire, and leaders from around the world converged on Copenhagen to hammer out a new treaty with renewed urgency. The film takes viewers behind the scenes with Nasheed as he tries to convince world leaders to finally take serious action against looming danger of climate change. The stakes couldn’t be higher for Nasheed, who sees this as the last chance to save his homeland, and the world.
ABOUT THE SCREENING AND COMMUNITY DISCUSSION
The screening will be held in the auditorium of William F. Laman Public Library, 2801 Orange Street, North Little Rock. Following the screening will be a community discussion featuring: Brian Broussard, co-owner of Verve Solutions, a home energy assessment company in Little Rock; Uta Meyer, youth program director for Audubon Arkansas; and Robert Hunter, branch manager for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
FILM TRAILER
http://youtu.be/utuRfbrwCYU
