Yesterday the sixteenth edition of the Millenium Documentary Film Festival Brussels kicked off with a masterclass by this year Festival’s guest of honor, legendary American filmmaker Oliver Stone (b. 1946). He was bestowed the Golden Millenium Honorary Award ‘for his contribution to world cinema’ (feature image, top).

The Festival also schedules a retrospective of Mr. Stone’s body of work, and includes his latest documentary feature, “Nuclear Now” (2022), first shown at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Stone’s “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” (2021), narrated by Donald Sutherland and Whoopi Goldberg, which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, is screened too.

“Nuclear Now” (2022, trailer)

In “Nuclear Now” Mr. Stone states that nuclear energy is a way out to combat climate change because green energy from sunlight and wind, among others, is not sufficient for the planet to be carbon neutral by 2050, before climate change becomes irreversible. Therefore he makes a persuasive case for nuclear power.

During his masterclass at Flagey’s in Brussels; Mr. Stone said about “Nuclear Now’ that what we fear can save us since nuclear is often—and wrongly—confused with the threat of an atomic bomb. ‘Let’s not forget that the nuclear bomb and nuclear energy are completely different. They used the bomb during the war and that was tragic, but after the war, if you pay attention, President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower and then President [John F.] Kennedy initiated the Atoms for Peace program [1953] to use nuclear atoms for peace, for homes, medicine, transportation, factories, agriculture—everywhere in our lives. They put out a lot of films about it and it took off right away. America went up to twenty percent of its electricity coming from nuclear energy. Russia, twenty percent. France, under Charles de Gaulle [French President from 1959-1969], went to seventy percent of its electricity. Sweden followed, even Germany followed. They had approximately three hundred reactors in the next ten, fifteen, twenty years. That’s amazing. The world was being electrified.’

‘If we had continued on that path, the United States would have been up to at least a rate of seventy percent by 2010. Instead, we’re talking about climate change, which is the stupidest thing in the world because it’s a waste of products of oil and fossil fuels, gas, methane and coal. So we went the wrong way because we were scared. Scared of the bomb, but we shouldn’t have been. It was nuclear energy: nuclear energy is different from the nuclear bomb. If you don’t believe me, read about it. This is a historically tragic situation; this is not like the black death or something. We just were not awake. We panicked, as we often do, as Americans drew up the Patriot Act [2001, following the September 11 attacks] and they overreacted.’

‘But I’m optimistic. With a little effort—with a lot of effort—this thing can be turned by technology. I think more and more countries are signing on, more and more people understand this. Our younger generation is not as terrified as we imagine. But we have to be carbon neutral by 2050. Good luck. Try to get by 2060 to get rid of fossil fuels. But the countries aren’t moving and the United States is not a leader. Renewable energy coming from the sun and wind don’t work all the time, that’s really a problem. It’s about eleven percent for sun now and about twenty-five percent for wind; that’s an overall average. When Al Gore was talking about renewals in his film “An Inconvenient Truth” [2006], he scared anybody when he said, ‘Oh, let’s make renewals.’ But since then, CO₂ and methane have gone up, so we made no progress. Don’t kid yourself. We have more farms, more sun, but no progress. That’s the issue. Get rid of methane and CO₂, that’s what we have to do. That’s what’s choking us. The gas cloud trapping the air, coming down, and we’re choking. A lot of it is pure waste from oil, gas, coal, and all the other industrial products like mercury… The list is endless. Think of the gas explosion in Bhopal, India, in 1984, with twenty thousand people dead and a hundred thousand wounded. These things are going to happen all the time, including oil explosions.’

On “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass,” Mr. Stone told the audience at the masterclass that he had put out a three-hour version and a four-hour version. ‘The reason was that the 2013 commemoration of JFK’s death came and went. The main news channels in the United States, the networks and the corporate media didn’t even mention the possibility of what happened. It was very depressing to see that. There’s no acknowledgment of the 1991 film; that film created quite a stir and led to the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, which was forced by academics to review much of the evidence and investigate some witnesses, but not enough. On top of it, the media did not report about a hundred and twenty-five findings they had in the report.’

“JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” (2021, trailer)

‘We were talking about the new evidence that was coming out from the thirty-some doctors and nurses who had testified that they saw JFK come into the first responder room and his brains were dripping out of his head. In the autopsy photos that were released, the brain was intact. That’s really weird. So James Dieugenio, a very good researcher, and I put it into a documentary and a book that got published and was very successful. It was in the Top Ten on Amazon for almost a year and a half.’

The Millenium Documentary Film Festival Brussels runs from March 15-22 and documentaries are screened in various theaters in the city, and both documentaries will be screened in the presence of Mr. Stone. “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” is sheduled on Saturday, March 16, at 03:00 PM at Flagey. “Nuclear Now” will be screened on Monday, March 18, at 08:20 PM CET at Cinéma Vendome 2.

A one-on-one interview with Mr. Stone, conducted prior to his masterclass and—with his consent—focusing on his career as a filmmaker, will soon be available.