Screening of documentary about physicist Joseph Rotblat at UN Film Festival

Monday, October 19, 2009
3:00 PM - 6:30 PM
(Pacific)
Bechtel Conference Center
Speaker: 
  • Burt Richter,
  • Martin Hellman

The United Nations Association Film Festival was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 12th UNAFF will be held from October 17-25, 2009 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco. This year, the theme is Energy and the World, reflecting the myriad of problems we encounter saving energy around the world and to seek awareness and solutions — through film — to better our lives and save our planet.

When the U.S. government brought the world’s greatest scientists together to build the first atomic bomb, nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat was among them. But his conscience would not allow him to continue, and he became the only member of the Manhattan Project to leave on moral grounds. Branded a traitor and spy, Rotblat went from designing atomic bombs to researching the medical uses of radiation. Together with Bertrand Russell he helped create the modern peace movement, and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Strangest Dream tells the story of Joseph Rotblat, the history of nuclear weapons, and the efforts of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs—an international movement Rotblat co-founded—to halt nuclear proliferation. The first Pugwash conference took place in the small Nova Scotia fishing village from which it draws its name. This film brings to light the group’s behind-the-scenes role in defusing some of the tensest moments of the Cold War. The story takes us from the site of the first nuclear test, in New Mexico, to Cairo, where contemporary Pugwash scientists meet under the cloud of nuclear proliferation, and to Hiroshima, where we see survivors of the first atomic attack. The Strangest Dream demonstrates the renewed threat represented by nuclear weapons, while encouraging hope through the example of morally engaged scientists and citizens.

  • 3:00 p.m. Film screening, "The Strangest Dream" (1989, Director: Eric Bednarski)
  • 4:30 p.m. Panel, "The Ethics of Nuclear Technology"
  • 5:30 p.m. Reception with filmmakers