Breaking the Chain
Stuart Weinstock, 14 min, US
THIS intense and engrossing short film re-enacts a 1939 meeting at Columbia University that altered the course of history. Physicist Leo Szilard has just realised that splitting atoms can cause a chain reaction of nuclear fission that will release enough energy to flatten a city. With great urgency he tells his theory to colleague Enrico Fermi and Columbia’s physics dean, George Pegram, who are at first reluctant to believe his warnings.
As the gravity of the situation sinks in, the men question whether national security should take priority over the freedom of…
