About this project

Last year YOU, our Kickstarter donors, sent us to Rome to follow the father of cold fusion, Martin Fleischmann, as he accepted an award for his discovery of an alternative energy source that will save the world (according to the cold fusion Believers). The Cold Fusion Conference in Rome included triumph and anxiety and thanks to you, we were there to capture the ups and downs of the Believers.

Now we need your help again. To tell this controversial and fascinating story, we need to explain the science behind Cold Fusion claims. We’re not out to prove Cold Fusion right or wrong—we’re telling a story about the ones who believe in it. But our audience (and that includes you) needs to understand what these Believers are trying to do.

To do this, we need animation: computer animation combined with live action shots of scientists explaining how “cold fusion” works (electricity dancing between their hands as they talk).

We need re-enactments: a copy of the Pons-Fleischmann cell made especially for us by a very talented glass-blower/artist to create re-enactments of the building of a Cold Fusion apparatus.

We need archival footage: we must acquire the rights to high-resolution footage that follows the events of 1989 when Pons and Fleischmann first announced to the world that seawater and batteries could generate all the energy the world would ever need.

This all costs money, but it’s critical in order to tell this incredible story in the way it needs to be told. Help us explain “cold fusion!”

Click here to find out more about what we need to finish telling this story and more about 137 Films.

http://www.137films.org/Support-Us.aspx

The Believers: a documentary film that begins in March of 1989, when the two respected chemists from the University of Utah stand in front of a wall of reporters; flashbulbs pop as the pair --- one shy, the other cracking jokes--- announce a startling claim: they have solved the world’s energy problems using seawater, batteries, and the mysterious glass contraption they hold proudly in their hands. “Cold Fusion” is born. Within days, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann are on the cover of Time Magazine. Scientists around the world are stunned. Not wanting to miss out on what one Brookhaven physicist calls “the most important discovery since fire,” they work around the clock to get their own cold fusion experiments up and running. But Pons and Fleischmann are acting strangely: they won’t share details, they refuse interviews, they don’t answer phone calls. Other scientists sound the alarm. They can’t get the experiment to work; the numbers don’t add up. The world watches as scientists denounce Pons and Fleischmann, ridiculing their results. Three short months after being hailed as heroes, Pons and Fleischmann’s careers are ruined and their reputations destroyed. Cold fusion is dead. Or is it?

THE BELIEVERS brings the extraordinary twenty-year story of Pons and Fleischmann’s “discovery” to life using archival footage, animation, and interviews with many of the original participants as well as authors, officials, and the scientists who still pursue cold fusion today. More than a simple account of past events, it’s a story that spans twenty years and weaves the past and the present together, providing valuable insight into the future. It unfolds one layer at a time, raising provocative questions about what happens when science collides with altruism, greed, the media, and ultimately, truth.

Is cold fusion a hoax, a mistake, or an answer? It depends on whose story you believe. Help us make it across the finish line and get this film out into the world! Help us answer the question: “What is cold fusion anyway?”