Yann Arthus-Bertrand (left) mixes stunningly beautiful natural landscapes with a critical monologue about human consumption. -- PHOTO: AFPLOS ANGELES - A NEW film about human excess and its impact on Earth's fragile ecosystem debuts on Friday, marking an unusual risk for its financial backer, one of the planet's biggest retailing conglomerates, France's PPR SA.
PPR, the maker of Gucci leather handbags and Puma shoes, paid 10 million euros (S$20.55 million) of the 12 million euro production budget to create 'Home', a documentary that will debut in 127 countries on June 5, World Environmental Day.
In it, filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand mixes stunningly beautiful natural landscapes with a critical monologue about human consumption, along with aerial footage of man's destructive footprint on the planet.
His eye swerves from the African plains to a sea of plastic-topped vegetable greenhouses in Spain and 'concentration camp-style cattle farms' where the narrator says 'not a blade of grass grows'.
Oil-rich and development-crazy Dubai gets a special mention as a 'new beacon for all the world's money' and is criticized for having endless sun but no solar-powered electricity.
PPR co-financed the production with French public broadcaster France 2 and the Qatar Foundation.
PPR Chief Executive Francois-Henri Pinault, whose family controls the company, insisted the film be given away for free to distributors. As a result, it is being shown at discounted rates in some theaters, for free in open-air screenings, on YouTube and 80 TV channels, and sold, sometimes at a discount, on DVDs around the world.
In the United States, the film will be run on the National Geographic Channel on Friday and released on home video by News Corp's 20th Century Fox.
National Geographic Channel spokesman Russell Howard said the network will run ads and collect revenue during the screening, but it bumped programming on its popular Friday night when it usually reaches about 3 million people. -- AP
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