Category Archives: Releases

Coming to PBS’s American Experience tonight, Monday, January 11:
THE CODEBREAKER

Director:
Chana Gazit

World Premiere:
American Experience (January 2021)

About:
The recently declassified story of an unheralded female cryptanalyst who was instrumental in America’s war effort against Nazi Germany.

Elizebeth Smith Friedman would tell people that during WWII, she held an unassuming role in the US Navy. The truth would not come out until decades after her death, when classified documents would reveal the pivotal role she played as a codebreaker, responsible for foiling Nazi plans to torpedo essential supply ships and for exposing an extensive espionage ring in Latin America. As Chana Gazit’s biography reveals, Friedman was not always out of the public eye, however – she gained a fair amount of celebrity in the 1930s when she was tasked by the US Coast Guard to lead a codebreaking unit to decrypt messages used by organized crime leaders transporting alcohol during Prohibition, and later served as chief witness during the trials that followed against the gangsters. But, during WWII, in the men’s world of the military, despite her expertise in cryptanalysis, Friedman was not permitted to lead her own unit, so she was overshadowed by less experienced men, and her contributions kept strictly classified. Though she would lay the foundation for the NSA, there was no place for her postwar. While Gazit’s film follows the dry American Experience house style, it nevertheless succeeds in giving Friedman her long deserved recognition.

Coming to virtual cinemas today, Wednesday, January 6:
MY REMBRANDT

Director:
Oeke Hoogendijk

World Premiere:
IDFA 2019

Select Festivals:
Docs Against Gravity, Montclair, Vancouver, GlobeDocs, Docville, Cologne

About:
Profiles of various owners – private and institutional – of works by the Old Master.

While still limited to the elite, there are surprisingly more private owners of Rembrandt paintings than one might expect. Filmmaker Oeke Hoogendijk introduces viewers to a handful in her somewhat shambolic art world exploration, such as the amiable Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, who renovates his sitting room to serve as the perfect backdrop for his beloved Rembrandt, Old Woman Reading; Baron Eric de Rothschild, whose Paris home is crammed full of remarkable work, including Portrait of Marten Soolmans and Portrait of Oopjen Coppit, a pair of Rembrandts that are sought by both the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum; and art dealer Jan Six XI, the latest in a family of Rembrandt collectors. Others float in and out of Hoogendijk’s film, which unfortunately has too much of a loose, episodic structure for most of its running time before settling in for the final stretch around a controversy around Six’s discovery (and sale) of a hitherto unknown new work by the Old Master.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, January 5:
SHE IS THE OCEAN

Director:
Inna Blokhina

World Premiere:
International Ocean Film Festival (2018)

Select Festivals:
San Diego, Santa Cruz, Long Beach, Maui, Honoulu Surf, Worldfest Houston

About:
Profiles of nine girls and women who are connected to the ocean, mostly through surfing.

Filmmaker Inna Blokhina attempts to construct a unified film through a series of unconnected vignettes about various women and how they relate to the ocean, threading the five-year story of Cinta Hansel, a young Balinese girl who is fulfilling her American father’s unrealized dreams of surfing success, throughout the doc. While the intent seems to be a metaphorical trajectory of women’s involvement with the ocean from girlhood to senescence, this doesn’t really come across successfully, given that most of the subjects are within the same age range. Other than Cinta, the subjects, profiled in overly slick sequences with excessive music-video montages, include a young professional surfer who is the daughter of a Hawaiian surfing legend, a shark conservationist who educates the public about the misunderstood species through shark diving tours, a cliff diver who was inspired by her gymnast mother, a ballet dancer who likes to free-dive, an acclaimed barrel surfer, a big wave surfer, the surfing mother of a deceased surf champion, and Sylvia Earle, the noted marine biologist. These profiles are unfortunately too brief to be compelling, and their cumulative effect bears diminishing returns, making this of limited interest to all but die-hard surf film fans.