CODE BREAKING: LOW HIGH TECH SPOOKING AND WHODUNITS Area

2008 Film & History Conference

“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond”

October 30-November 2, 2008

Chicago, Illinois

Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008

AREA: Code Breaking: Low & High Tech Spooking and Whodunits

Successful military or political code breaking is akin to glancing at an opponent's hole card in Texas Hold 'Em. This is a secretive art often left unexamined by professional historians. In 1950, Punch magazine labeled Brigadier Desmond Young's Rommel: The Desert Fox "brilliant." But Young later learned that both Rommel and the British command were deciphering each other's messages throughout the war.

Breaking the Japanese Purple code did not prevent Pearl Harbor(Tora, Tora, Tora,) but it brought victory at Midway (Midway). Other films probing this clandestine world include many of the James Bond productions, political thrillers (from Three Days of the Condor to Sneakers), historical romances (Enigma), buddy films (Windtalkers), or military adventure dramas (U-571). And documentaries investigate the activities of BletchleyPark and the National Security Agency's "The Puzzle Palace."

Whodunits and mysteries abound, be they fact, semi-fiction, or fantasy. You may wish to explore situations in which code breakers, to preserve their secret, did not impede an enemy action. Or perhaps speculate on what other code-breaking treasure troves might be awaiting later-generation historians. Whose interests does each code-breaking film represent? What patterns in plot and characterization emerge? Which histories are embellished or tarnished through these kinds of films?

Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to:

Keith Wheelock, Chair

Code Breaking: Low & High Tech Spooking and Whodunits

325 Mountain View Road

Skillman, NJ08558

Email: kwheelock@ patmedia.net

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-round proposals: May 1, 2008.

This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial Film & History Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of Film and History. Speakers will include founder John O’Connor and editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate the transfer to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University and author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the World; and special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (