Cynthia Corral, hardcore Cinequester and tireless reviewer gave Clandestine a brief mention in her review of the Shorts Program 3, Docunation.

CLANDESTINE is a narrative about the filmmaker’s father who is a shortwave hobbyist, but intertwined with a documentary about the encrypted messages used by spies, and the history of what happened to some of these spies.  It’s a 30 minute film and I found it to be fascinating and well told.  I like when documentaries teach us something, and this doc was quite interesting.

More than thankful for this review, we are especially grateful for Cynthia’s energy and dedication to Cinequest and independent film. Throughout the duration of Cinequest she watched 26 films in 11 days, and reviewed nearly all of them. She, perhaps unknowingly, was our eyes and ears to the festival.

As you may know, Gideon and I were unable to attend, but Cynthia was kind enough to answer some questions about our second screening. Nearly 100 people attended Shorts Program 3 on Saturday, March 6th. The favorites among audience members were Notes On The Other (which we screened with at IDFA) and How Green Was Our Valley; Cynthia mentioned Clandestine was one of her favorites as well.

A few hours before the American premiere of Clandestine, a reviewer for Metroactive, Richard von Busack, posted a little blurb about the film:

Clandestine by Gideon Kennedy and Marcus Rosentrater is a fascinating Jay Rosenblatt-style trip down memory lane with help from the Prelinger and other archives. The mystery of sinister “number talkers” is used to contrast the secrets of the narrator’s father: he was another one of those 1950s men much better at dealing with a ham radio than with people in the room. Still: “My father was not, as they say, a member of the second oldest profession”—that is, a spy.

The directors have a big idea here: the way a covert life matches the mystery of the strange numerical codes bounced off the ionosphere by short-wave radios; in short, the father is a code that can’t be broken. There’s a trend in autobiographical indie film, in which it’s explained that a parent’s divorce is obviously the most terrible thing that ever happened in the filmmaker’s life. I don’t at all want to dismiss Clandestine as such, yet I can’t buy its equation that betraying a marriage is the same thing as betraying a country.

If you aren’t familiar with Jay Rosenblatt’s work, this is a compliment.

This week, Doc at Mod Mobilian wrote a kind review of Clandestine, and in doing so, has reminded us of how incredible the support from Mobile has been. The Doc says Clandestine “is not just a documentary – it is an examination of deceit and “ciphering” in familial communications as well as international espionage”. We hope this will get the town excited for the Mobile premiere of Clandestine which is soon to come.

Thanks Mobile, and thanks Doc!

It was pleasing to find this post on Clandestine last week by a kind stranger abroad. Tomas Goesl is a Shortwave listener and Ham Radio operator (call OK1JRA), who keeps up a website about radios and communication across the globe. It is very thorough and up to date from what I can tell (it is in the Czech language). For any reader of the Clandestine blog who is interested in the topic of shortwave, radio, and Numbers Stations, it is a good place to subscribe.

Contact has been established with Mr. Goesl through his website, and he has expressed more interest in viewing Clandestine. One possibility for this would be the 44th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival which takes place in July 2010.

So, keep your fingers crossed and tune your dials to Surfing on the Radio Waves.

Note: you can use Google Translate to translate and browse sites in foreign languages.

Here is the Mr. Goesl’s post translated by Google:

In its surfing the net I came across an interesting film. It’s such a cross between a fancy story and document the numbers stations. Film-makers have used freely available documents and information tehta stations, add the story and created a piece that would have fans tehta mysterious stations certainly not be missed. The film lasts about 34 minutes, the black and white and will have its world premiere Dec. 20 at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival.

You can now access our electronic press kit (EPK) from the press page of our website. Additionally you can download it directly by clicking here.

It is a work in progress that we will be constantly updating with new screenings, photographs, awards (fingers crossed), trailers, and anything that we feel might be helpful in getting the word out on Clandestine. You can always find the latest copy of it at clandestine-movie.com.