Blue Water, White Death

Dirs. Peter Gimbel, James Lipscomb. 1971, 99 mins. 35mm archival print courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive. In this real-life, high seas adventure, investment banker turned underwater explorer Peter Gimbel leads a crew of hippie Hemingways on a voyage to capture a Great White shark on film. Accompanied by folk singer Tom Chapin who gives their odyssey an air of pop mysticism, the lightly self-aggrandizing yet winningly earnest Americans attack their mission with genuinely child-like enthusiasm, yielding, at the last, some of the most awesome deep sea imagery ever filmed.