For those of you who do not know, there is a film festival in Washington D.C. that is wholly dedicated to spy movies. It is called the Thrill Spy International Film Festival and this year it will host Clandestine.
In its second year the Thrill Spy Film Festival teams up with the National Museum of Crime and Punishment to offer discounted tours to film festival attendees. Filmmakers attending the film festival are invited to participate in a photo shoot held on the set of "America's Most Wanted", which is located in the museum.
It's exciting for us to have our film showcased in the intelligence capital of the world; a city that played host to many of the events documented in Clandestine.
The Thrill Spy International Film Festival will take place on Sep. 30th - Oct. 2nd at the Navy Memorial Archives in Washington D.C.
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Last month Gideon Kennedy travelled with CLANDESTINE to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil for Seminário de Cinema where he screened the film and presented a paper at a round table discussion, “The Subtle Border Between Reality and Fiction”.
Read about Gideon’s first day in Brazil here »
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BEGIN TRANSMISSION
You’ve probably heard the news by now: 11 people have been accussed and arrested for participation in a Russian spy ring. Most of the articles written about this case so far have concentrated on the pedestrian lives of the individuals, with one neighbor proclaiming the spies “suburbs personified”. This very thing helped attract us to make Clandestine. Indeed, many of the spies who are documented in Clandestine lived in such a way; meeting their handlers at grocery stores, at the zoo, and in art museums was as public as they ever got.
Besides all that, there is a mention to Numbers Stations in this case. During surveillance of one couple’s home there was a discovery of
“the irregular electronic clicking sounds associated with the receipt of coded radio transmissions.”
And Numbers Stations around the world continue to broadcast.
END TRANSMISSION
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The Festival de Cine de Huesca, taking place in Huesca, Spain, is one of the country’s premiere short film festivals. It has competitive sections for narrative and documentary short films. Clandestine will be competing in the International Documentary Short Films section for the 38th edition of the Festival de Cine de Huesca.
Just wanted to send out a quick reminder about the screening of our movie, CLANDESTINE, tomorrow (or later today, Sunday 18th) at the Atlanta Film Festival. Here are some details for those of you that can make it.
The first and most important thing to remember is that our film is playing as part of DOCUMENTARY SHORTS #1. Tickets are not sold individually for CLANDESTINE, so the staff may be confused if you ask for them.
The screening is at 4:40pm at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema in theater 6. As you may know, there are a bazillion festivals going on in Atlanta this weekend. In preparation for this, the film festival has hired parking lot attendants to make sure only movie watchers are using the parking lot (not Dogwood Festival). Even still, parking was tight on Saturday, so car-pool if you can.
The after-party will take place at the 10-High immediately following the screening and Q&A session. There will be a healthy serving of beverages, cake, spy music, and obscure mid 20th century movies. We hope you will come celebrate with us. (Free beverages for ticket holders, while supplies last)
IMPORTANT LINKS
Hope to see you all there!
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Mobile Press Register’s Michael Dumas talks about Clandestine and it’s Mobile premiere this weekend.
“Our nation’s enemies, working in our midst, must use codes.” So says an unidentified American military official, seen through scratchy archival footage as he demonstrates the tools and techniques of the espionage trade. The scene is from the short film “Clandestine,” which premieres Saturday evening at the Mobile library’s main branch.
Come on out if you’re in the area!
CLANDESTINE
A film by Gideon C. Kennedy & Marcus Rosentrater
Screening: Sunday, April 18th at 4:40pm
at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
Local Filmmakers Bring Film Home After International Premiere
If you had walked into the Highlands video store Movies Worth Seeing in 2004, chances are filmmakers Gideon Kennedy or Marcus Rosentrater would have been your helpful clerk, organizing titles or studying their future career on the countertop T.V.
It was here, in fact, in Anne and Jerry Rubenstein’s decades-old neighborhood institution, where the two met each other, forming a collaboration that has produced three short films, six commercials, three special event videos, and one music video under their production company, Climenole LLC. Their works have played in over 30 cities worldwide and have won several awards.
Now, in what they consider their homecoming, their latest short, “Clandestine”, a documentary/fiction hybrid made entirely from ephemeral materials, will have its Atlanta premiere at the 34th edition of the Atlanta Film Festival this April.
The two began work on “Clandestine” in 2005, after first being given the idea by another Atlanta filmmaker, Matthew Owensby, then a video store clerk at that other Highlands film hub Videodrome. Before “Clandestine” would be completed, Kennedy and Rosentrater finished another short film, six commercials and a music video. But, in March of 2009 an inquiry about the project from the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) would crack the whip. The two would race to have the film completed in time for its world premiere at IDFA, the world’s largest documentary film festival, in November of 2009.
Since then, “Clandestine” has shown at the Cinequest Film Festival in California and the Thin Line Film Festival in Texas. It is currently on tour around the country with the Black Maria Film + Video Festival, where it received a Jury Prize (1st Prize).
Clandestine will play as part of the Atlanta Film Festival on Sunday, April 18th at 4:40pm and Wednesday, April 22nd at 2:20pm. Kennedy and Rosentrater are expected to be joined by family, friends, fans, and supporters for the screening and Q&A at the April 18th screening.
About the Filmmakers
Gideon Kennedy, a native to Atlanta, has had roots in the Southern film community since he operated Georgia State University’s Cinefest Film Theatre in 2001 and 2002. After graduation, he went on to manage Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema during its first years of operation, running projection and assisting in film selection. After moving to Mobile, AL in 2005, he continued pursuing his passion for cinema, helping to open a single-screen independent arthouse cinema, organizing a variety of film screening events, and acting as programming director for the inaugural South Alabama Film Festival. Additionally, Gideon has served on numerous juries and film selection committees, including the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, UT and the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers.
Marcus Rosentrater moved to Atlanta from his home state of Colorado in 2004. His first stop off of the plane was Movies Worth Seeing, where he submitted his application for employment. Working at Movies provided Rosentrater with a connection to the Atlanta film and art community. Besides his collaborations with Kennedy, he worked together with fellow Movies employee Ron Hughes designing the website and brand for Hughes’ newest endeavor, the photography exhibition space Composition Gallery. With Will Sanders, another Movies alum, he started editing films for local film collective Big Party High 5.
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This week Lagniappe Magazine’s Asia Frey shared some kind words about Clandestine while giving a shout out to film’s Mobile premiere.
Managing to be both illuminating and disorienting at the same time, “Clandestine” is a rare and effective mix of authentic archival material and imagined narrative elements, creating a truly unique viewing experience.
It’s always nice to hear from our friends at Lagniappe Magazine. Come join them in celebrating the Mobile premiere of Clandestine on April 3rd at 5pm at Bernheim Hall in the Ben May Main Library downtown. An after party will commence at the O.K. Bike Shop immediately following the screening.
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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.
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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.
