‘A TEST WE CAN’T AFFORD TO FAIL’
Film explores nuclear fusion’s viability
One doesn’t have to be a scientist to comprehend that our planet will be in dire straits if we can’t come up with a clean, cheap and vast energy source — and soon.
Let There Be Light, the latest from Montreal documentary makers Mila Aung-Thwin and Van Royko, tackles the issue head-on and delves into the ongoing, often frustrating efforts by scientists in trying to establish that nuclear fusion is that source, and a viable one, too.
Nor does one have to be an astrophysicist to follow the logic of this — dare we say — illuminating doc. Aung-Thwin and Royko put it all out in most accessible layman and fascinating terms. It’s safe to say that most — save for some in the White House — believe fossil fuels (oil, coal et al.) won’t be the answer to our future energy needs.
In fact, that dependency could eventually lead to our very demise.
Mark Uhran, one of the scientists featured in the film, puts it most succinctly: “This is a test we can’t afford to fail. We have to prove that we have the intelligence to prevent our own extinction.”
There is considerable doubt that mankind has that foresight. But there are even more daunting issues that those at the epicentre of the fusion front must deal with: politics, finances and failure. Fusion is not a new concept, but as the joke goes among those in the know: “Fusion is the energy of the future — and always will be.”
When asked how long it will take to achieve fusion, scientist and writer Eric Lerner is pessimistic: “At current levels of financing … at the age of the universe.”
And therein lies the conundrum.
Co-director Aung-Thwin is optimistic about the science and technology relating to fusion.
“It’s the money, and that’s really the politics about which I’m less optimistic. Basically, it’s about how much money is put into it for it to be solved. We know how to do it — it’s just we don’t know how to make it cheap and long enough. It’s kind of like an airplane that’s 90 per cent flying.”
Another pivotal problem alluded to in the doc is: Do we have the ability to think such long term?
Can scientists work on building a machine that could take generations to complete?
“I met these scientists who were doing just that,” AungThwin says. “They had the attitude that they were building something like a huge cathedral and were aware that it wouldn’t be finished until long after they were dead. But they were still doing it.
“How many people have you ever met who work like that?”
In the film’s end credits, AungThwin thanks his mother for turning him on to the world of fusion when he was seven years old.
“I have a very strong memory of that, and it stuck with me at the time. But then I never heard of it again for 30 years, until about three or four years ago. Then I realized what they were doing, and they’re still building kind of the same machine that they envisioned back in the ’70s.”
But there’s no mystery as to why Aung-Thwin felt compelled to do this doc.
“Energy is so much in the news these days, and we just wanted to tell a positive story about a subject that too few people really know about.”
And, hopefully, a story with a positive ending.
One of the more compelling entertainment stories to emerge in this millennium focused on the unlikely comeback of singersongwriter Sixto Rodriguez — or Sugar Man as he is also known — who should have been a folk star in the last millennium. His remarkable story was captured in the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man.
As a result of the doc and after a nearly four-decade absence from the spotlight, Rodriguez was able to resume performing around the world. And he’s still going.
To mark his recent 75th birthday, Rodriguez has embarked on a North American tour, which will bring him to Montreal’s newly minted MTELUS — formerly the Métropolis — on Sept. 19.
“It’s been quite the ride,” Rodriguez understates in a phone interview.
That it has. For those unfamiliar with his story, Rodriguez had released the politically and socially charged album Cold Fact in 1970. Because of its content, it didn’t get much record-company support, but it somehow found an audience in South Africa, where it was to be banned by the apartheid government.
Regardless, copies of the disc were bootlegged and circulated around the country, and Rodriguez’s music provided fuel to the anti-apartheid movement there, and he was to become a cult hero not only in South Africa but also in Australia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Alas, Rodriguez, living in anonymity in a working-class section of Detroit, had no clue that he had a following anywhere.
Searching for Sugar Man chronicles the successful efforts of some of his more ardent South African fans to track him down in Detroit some 35 years after the release of Cold Fact.
Since the debut of the doc, Rodriguez has played many of the most illustrious concert venues in the world — from New York’s Radio City Music Hall to London’s Royal Albert Hall to Australia’s Sydney Opera House — which he has twice sold out.
“I owe so much to that film,” Rodriguez says. “The film has since been translated into Russian, Chinese, Italian, French, Polish … It’s become such a global event — something that I could have never imagined would happen.
“But I never gave up hope and I never gave up playing guitar or the art form I call ‘musical political.’ ”
Which is to say he’s still writing and singing about racism and the plight of the inner-city poor. He’s also embracing issues like Black Lives Matter.
“Sadly, things haven’t changed so much since I first started performing. But I’m as motivated as ever and I feel rejuvenated.
“I’m a live egg,” he jokes. “And there’s no stopping me now.”