Neither Confirm Nor Deny

Date: 28/11/2023 Times: 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

We are proud to announce a special showing of a film that does not yet have a distributor in the UK but has been shown in the USA. It is produced by Sheryl Crown, who lives in Wivenhoe and whose films, Searching for Sugarman and Tale of Tales, we have previously shown at Moving Image. Sheryl has asked us to show the film and honour the director, Phil Carter, who recently died at the young age of 49, and Terence Davies, the British film director (Benediction, Distant Vices, Still Lives and The Deep Blue Sea), who also died recently, by giving all proceeds from ticket sales to St Helena Hospice, which supported Davies at home in his final days.

The film is a documentary, telling a story that happened during the Cold War, when the CIA secretly raised a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. The six-year operation included an intricate cover story by billionaire Howard Hughes. Drawing on declassified documents and never-before-seen interviews, Neither Confirm nor Deny tells one of the highest-stakes, yet least known stories of the Cold War. The story has every aspect of a super spy thriller. The mysterious, possibly insane genius, top secret spy operations, international politics at the highest level and a classic attack of Yankee ingenuity on a nearly impossible mechanical problem. The mission had little or no legal basis in international law. If it has been done with the knowledge of the USSR it could have plunged the world into nuclear war. In practice and in spirit, it had to be done in secret or not at all. Eventually the story leaked and was broken in 1975 by the New York Times among others.

Venue: William Loveless Hall