Conference's winning films, surprising lectures in review.
3/17/2000
Flying Saucers over Hollywood! by filmmaker Paul Davids offers a rare glimpse into the great Hollywood UFO films.
Hollywood's Oscar has now found its equivalent in the world of ufology: The EBE Award. The EBE even looks like the Oscar, in a ufological sort of way. Whereas Oscar is a rather featureless, gold-colored statue that looks more like a crash dummy than an alien, the EBE is definitely of extraterrestrial appearance. Like Oscar, EBE stands tall and erect on a base with a plaque. Unlike Oscar, however, EBE has large, slanted eyes and a striking resemblance to what has become known as an alien Gray. The statuette of the EBE holds a motion picture camera in his hand, symbolizing the purpose of the award.
If you have any dreams of ever winning an EBE Award, you.ll have to begin by producing either a short video or a feature-length project to present to the International UFO Congress (IUFOC). IUFOC meets twice a year, usually at the River Palms Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, where the sounds of slot machines would definitely drown out the noise of any approaching alien craft. (Most UFOs are silent, anyway).
EBE is an abbreviation for 'extraterrestrial biological entity,' a term used widely to refer to extraterrestrials long before the term 'ET' became the international standard expression, thanks to Steven Spielberg's famous film. The EBE Award has evolved since it was first conceived by Bob Brown, organizer of the biannual International UFO Congress.
As Brown explained at the EBE Awards banquet in Laughlin last Saturday night, the EBE Award was created to honor and call attention to those outstanding films and videos about UFOs and aliens that might otherwise fail to receive any form of public recognition. Hollywood films only occasionally receive recognition at the EBE Awards, where cult classics of the UFO genre occasionally get a nod or a wink. For the most part, the winners are dedicated independents who put their life's savings into their efforts, to explain or prove some aspect of the UFO phenomenon. Entrants this year heavily tilted their projects toward the crop circles, as Ian Christopher of San Francisco found his crop circle film competing against a similar effort by Giorgio Bongiovanni of Italy. Both projects featured the crop circle aerial photography of Peter Sorensen, whose annual trips to the domain of Stonehenge, to film the crop pictograms, have become something of a pilgrimage for the Californian.
Generally, Michael Hesemann of Germany can be counted on to win one or more EBEs for his prolific UFO production efforts. This year was no exception. Hesemann's five-part collection of UFO clips -- which encompass the entire world and the last five decades alike -- was a prodigious undertaking, and Part Five received special honors.
Hollywood did interface with the EBE Awards this year, with the EBE bestowed upon a documentary by Chris Wyatt and Passport International Productions, titled 'Close Encounters: Proof of Man's Contact with Extraterrestrials.' The program, running just short of one hour, is the pilot for a new television series from Passport. Wyatt, a former CBS producer of both 'Day and Date' and 'UFOs Above and Beyond,' is now based in Silicon Valley, where among other exploits he is spearheading a UFO Web site known as Ufocommunity.com.
The pilot program of "CLOSE ENCOUNTERS" features an extraordinary, up-close-and-personal interview with astronaut Gordon Cooper. The interview amplifies the precision with which Cooper unambiguously declares that the ETs are here, that Man from Earth is about ready to get to know Man from Somewhere Else. Cooper has long tried to break ground on the UFO issue, having taken the matter to the United Nations General Assembly in 1976. The world wasn't ready for his news then, so he was remarkably quiet on the subject for the following two decades. Only in the late 1990s did he begin speaking out again. Shorter interview clips with Cooper have appeared elsewhere, but one of Wyatt.s achievements in .Close Encounters. was getting the astronaut to talk in detail. The debunkers at JPL, the Skeptics Society, and elsewhere still take the position that Cooper, though a national hero, is merely mistaken about his beliefs about what he saw on several occasions that convinces him ET.s are real. Yet, skeptics. denials and rejections begin to fall quite flat . as though they are the holdouts of the Flat Earth Society.
The pilot program of "CLOSE ENCOUNTERS," which will be seen at a date yet to be announced on cable TV, also features the latest alien-implant surgical research sponsored by Dr. Roger Leir, as well as some startling clips of UFO sightings and scientific facts about a piece of debris purported to come from the Roswell UFO crash.
I had come to Laughlin for the UFO Congress with both Wyatt and Passport, because barely a month ago, I was brought on board as writer, producer, director of the impending 12 episodes of "Close Encounters" that will follow the pilot show. We came to Laughlin well-prepared to lay the groundwork. Almost all of the presenters at Laughlin had granted us in-depth video interviews, which I conducted in a suite on the top floor of the River Palms resort - 25 stories above the river. For six days, continuing for almost 10 hours a day, UFO experts from around the world took the elevator up to that suite, sat down in a chair in front of our camera, and participated in extremely animated question-and-answer sessions as I tried to explore the UFO phenomenon with them from every conceivable angle.
An extraordinary group of presenters showed up this year. Among those who came with 'hard evidence' was Graham Birdsall, of UFO Magazine in the United Kingdom. He has come by some NASA footage that is apparently so damaging to NASA and SETI claims against the beliefs and tenants of ufology that a major international network purportedly offered $1 million to acquire exclusive rights. However, since it was not clear to Birdsall that the video material, if licensed to the network in question, would be exposed to the world or locked up for years out of sight and out of mind (as occurred for years with the JFK assassination film made with Zapruder's 8mm camera), the offer was refused. Birdsall is intent on the world seeing what NASA has refused to release: footage of a swarm of huge UFOs surrounding a 12-mile-long tether that was part of a NASA experiment from the Shuttle. The story of how the NASA footage was recorded live by an enterprising eavesdropper in England will soon be forthcoming. Purportedly, one top SETI researcher in Australia who saw the footage became convinced of the UFO coverup. Angered, that researcher declared that whoever was hiding the facts from the worldwide public was an enemy of the entire human race. These are strong words from a sedate researcher who has spent years listening for the alien signals from deep space that SETI says have still never been located or received.
Other big names in ufology showed for the conference. Los Angeles TV commentator George Knapp was on hand with footage of his private interviews with Col. Philip Corso, who broke ranks with the coverup of UFOs in his definitive book, The Day after Roswell. George Knapp showed that Corso's claims about his role in secretly disseminating alien technology from the Roswell crash to private industry, on behalf of the U.S. military, did not begin with the writing of his book. Corso was rather consistent in his claims and remarks, going back at least to 1992, when Knapp began conducting the interviews with Corso. That's significant, because the Roswell hoopla of the 1990s had not yet begun at that point. Our Showtime film, 'Roswell,' was not released until 1994, and government investigations that led up to the 1997 50th anniversary celebration followed. Corso couldn't have been aware that any of the excitement was about to unfold when he first began speaking with George Knapp.
Another heavyweight of ufology who was on hand was Ron Regehr, who has an extensive background in secret satellite technology. Regehr was on the inside for decades, and he got to see the satellite transmissions that showed what was entering our atmosphere -- transmissions that have not been available to the rest of us. Regehr states that at the time of the famous 1976 sightings in Iran that became a huge international flap, he had proof of the UFO over Tehran from the secret satellite data -- but he could say nothing about it. That contributed, however, to his unfolding interest in ufology, and today he is at the forefront of research into the Ramey telegram: Using computers to study the text of a secret telegram, which Ramey holds in his hand. The message appears in one of the official Fort Worth Star Telegram 1947 photos, when Ramey held an impromptu press conference to announce the Army had found 'just a weather balloon.' That telegram may soon become the Rosetta stone of unlocking the Roswell secrets, because the fragments of the telegram thus far identified and read so clearly contradict all the latest official government Roswell explanations.
Yet another of the heavyweights at Laughlin was Daniel Sheehan. A powerhouse lawyer -- one you would never want as an adversary -- Sheehan was intimately involved with the Pentagon Papers case during the Vietnam War. He also was at the forefront of the nuclear whistle-blower case that ended in death for Karen Silkwood. Not long ago, he unearthed extraordinary information that leads him into the world of ufology, which is what brought him to Laughlin. Sheehan says he saw a classified section of Project Blue Book while undertaking some official duties for former President Jimmy Carter. The details of those classified sections put fire in his belly as he saw what he regarded as hard evidence of both the ET visitations and the government coverup. It has had a similar effect on him, personally, as former Command Sergeant Major Bob Dean experienced when he first gained access to a secret SHAPE (the military arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) UFO report called The Assessment.
All of these gentlemen (and a number of ladies, including Constance Clear and The Excyles author Mia Adams) came to the penthouse suite at the River Palms to make their own contributions to our upcoming series, 'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.' More details about the series, now in production, will be forthcoming at a later date.
The Laughlin experience was quite overpowering this March. It was the best-attended International UFO Congress to date, bringing together more than 900 registrants. The main conference hall has rarely been sold out at past events. This year, many of the events saw every single chair filled, and what must have been an additional hundred or more people standing. Fortunately, the fire marshals were apparently not interested either in UFOs or in causing problems at the conference, and they stayed away.
All of this had its origins about 10 years ago in Berlin, when Michael Hesemann staged an extraordinary UFO conference that was attended by former Col. Wendelle Stevens, one of ufology's most prolific publishers. Stevens's UFO Photo Archives, a series of 19 volumes, held in-depth UFO reports covering everything from George Adamski to Billy Meier. Following the German conference, Stevens sponsored the first U.S. International UFO Congress in Tucson, in 1991. When compared with this year.s event, the first IUFOC was small, but it served the purpose of cementing relationships between a group of ufologists from many countries -- relationships that have endured and strengthened through the years. Of course, the Tucson UFO Congress did not have any EBE Awards. The awards and film festival aspects of the Congress came along later.
My own prior foray into the world of the EBE Award occurred in 1997. I received an EBE Award that year for Best UFO Documentary of One Hour or Less. My entry was GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY UFO BRIEFING FOR THE WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE PIONEERS. The title was almost longer than the video. It was based on a presentation I made in 1995 for the White Sands Missile Range Pioneers, on the occasion of their 50th anniversary. The participants were the founders of America's rocketry and missile programs, who gathered at the Hilton in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to celebrate their decades of military and space achievements. As the producer of the film ROSWELL, I had been asked to be the keynote banquet presenter. My presentation was not just a survey of New Mexico's most famous UFO incident, but a plea to the military (which was represented at the function by people from all branches of the services, as well as NASA) for a more open policy -- one of disclosing information on UFOs, rather than upholding secrecy. The presentation is still available as a home video.
Last, but certainly not least, I must mention the presence of AlienZoo at the IUFOC. The beautiful calendar-poster published by AlienZoo was in evidence everywhere. It adorned the dealer's room, the registration area, the doors to the conference room, and even the speaker's podium. Several AlienZoo contributors, including Wiggz and Jim Dilettoso, were on hand. Of the group from AlienZoo, Dilettoso contributed his time and insights in two lengthy 'CLOSE ENCOUNTER' interviews, in which he not only discussed his scientific analysis of various UFO photos -- including the Billy Meier photos -- but also invited along contactee Robert Short, who described the Giant Rock gatherings of the 1950s.
The ufologists have now departed from Laughlin, ambling or flying back to their native haunts. Be sure to log on with us again next Friday, when we'll be back in Tinseltown for more FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD!