Rating my UFO Documentaries

All of my UFO-related documentaries are now freely available on-line through various distributors (or you can pay to download them or buy DVDs if you want). An old friend and I were having a beer the other night and asked me how I would rate my own films. I thought about it, and originally posted at my Facebook page my ratings for all of my old docs, but I've winnowed them down to just the UFO ones here (as with allmusic.com's record ratings, out of 5 stars).

I still consider the Friedman film to be the best documentary I ever made on any subject, and I think Fields of Fear isn't bad, either (although it suffered from having a smaller budget and therefore less production value). Others may rate them higher, or they may rate them lower, but I've tried to be as objective as I can be, and this is where they fall for me.

Paul Kimball

Denise Djokic: Seven Days, Seven Nights

Of all the films that I've done over the years, my 2002 documentary on Canadian cellist Denise Djokic and her tour through northern British Columbia with pianist David Jalbert remains my favourite.

Everytime people like Denise and David play, I think they're opening a doorway to a better world... and perhaps a different world, and the "other" that may inhabit it.

Paul Kimball

Carl Jung: Matter of Heart - documentary

Matter of Heart is a very interesting 1986 documentary about Carl Jung, that examines his life and times, but more importantly his ideas, particularly about the collective unconscious, often with a mystical bent that was characteristic of Jung's work. The film consists largely of reminiscences and  insights by many of Jung's former pupils, friends and colleagues, as well as some footage of Jung himself being interviewed later in his life.

Well worth a look.

Paul Kimball

Beyond Best Evidence & The Ability To Think For Ourselves

There is now less than a month left in the fundraising campaign for Beyond Best Evidence: The UFO Enigma, and the response has been very disappointing, I'm afraid. I remain hopeful that this home stretch will see a jump that moves us further towards our goal, if perhaps not all the way there, but despite myriad radio appearances to talk about the project (and over 8,000 visitors to this site since the campaign started), and nice write-ups from folks like Greg Taylor at The Daily Grail and Greg Bishop at UFO Mystic, the support hasn't happened (note: many thanks to the hardy "band of brothers" who have contributed so far).

Crowd fundraising developed as a way for filmmakers (and other artists) to maintain an independent voice in a world where media consolidation has diminished the ability to make those voices heard. As I've said before, a film like Beyond Best Evidence, with a thoughtful and intelligent discussion about the UFO phenomenon and all of its possible facets / explanations, simply isn't going to get made in the mainstream media system these days (note: if someone can do a similar film in the same way, I'll happily admit I was wrong). Networks don't try to enlighten these days - they are solely concerned with selling advertising, and sadly, in our consumerist society run amok, that imperative has trumped any other considerations when it comes to documentary filmmaking in particular, especially where it concerns a subject like the UFO phenomenon, which has been tabloidized and commercialized virtually to the point of no return. As a result, we get "reality TV" and what the networks call "factual programming", which is about as close to Orwellian "doublespeak" as you can get.

But maybe that's the world we live in these days. Maybe people are happy to sit back, not get involved, and just digest the grey glop that the multimedia conglomerates feed them. Maybe they don't want to be challenged. Maybe they don't want to think, or confront uncomfortable subjects. Maybe they've forgotten how.

In the New York Times yesterday there was a great opinion column by Charles Blow. In "A Summer to Simmer" Blow wrote:

At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee about oil subsidies, John Watson, C.E.O. of Chevron — which reported last month that first-quarter net income rose 36 percent from the same period last year to $6.21 billion — said that “I don’t think American people want shared sacrifice. I think they want shared prosperity.” The problem is, Mr. Money Bags, that you and other corporate interests are the only ones sharing in the prosperity. For Americans on the lower end of the income spectrum, it’s all sacrifice. 

The people who run these massive corporations - like the health insurance  companies that want to raise health insurance premiums while reporting record profits for a third straight year, even as people forgo critical care - don't want an informed populace. They want slaves to the system.

But what does this have to do with the UFO phenomenon?

On the surface, nothing. But underneath, where free thought exists even in the worst of times, it has everything to do with the UFO phenomenon, because UFOs are something that can't be controlled by those giant monopolistic corporations, and the politicians who have sold their souls to those corporations. UFOS represent something subversive - possibilities that they would prefer we not think about, because if we do, then just maybe we'll start to take a different view of our world, and our lives. In short, we'll start to think for ourselves again.  

Whatever UFOs might be (including the possibility that they can all be explained in prosaic terms), just considering them in a serious and thoughtful way is dangerous to the existing order... and we live in a world where we need a lot more dangerous thinking, because we've been placed in an existential trap, and it's time we tried to find a way out.

Is Beyond Best Evidence: The UFO Enigma going to get us out of that trap? Of course not.  No film can do that, regardless of the subject matter. But it will be a small step in the right direction of reclaiming our ability to imagine a world other than the one that we've been told is the right one, and that's what I've always tried to do as a filmmaker. I don't try to encourage people to agree with me, or anyone else; rather, I encourage them to think for themselves about the world in which we live, even when their conclusions might be different than my own.


Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings from Paul Kimball on Vimeo.

I wrote at the beginning that I'm very disappointed by the response this campaign has received. The reason isn't because it will take profit away from my company (all profits from the sale of iflm will go to charity), or because I particularly want to spend months traveling and conducting interviews and then editing the film (not exactly the most profitable use of my time and talents), but because I think the film would be important, on a number of levels not just related to the specific question of "what are UFOs?"

Those are the kinds of films that I think should be made. The disappointment stems from the fact that not very many people seem to agree with me...yet. I'm asking for your help over the remaining 27 days to change that, so that we can move forward together,  to raise a little hell.



Words of wisdom from some fellow Canadians!

Paul Kimball

Beyond Best Evidence - IndieGoGo campaign has launched

The fundraising campaign for Beyond Best Evidence: The UFO Enigma, launched today. A co-production between Tim Binnall and yours truly, the film is a sequel to my 2007 documentary Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings.

You can read about the campaign, and contribute, at our IndieGoGo page. We've offered various "perks" at the different levels which we hope folks will find worthwhile.

A couple of quick notes.

1. In the "Universe" and "Multiverse" levels, you'll see reference to my forthcoming book, The Other Side of Truth. Several months ago I finally decided that if my good pal Nick Redfern can write a book every other month, then the least that I could do would be write one book about my last ten years filming and researching various aspects of the paranormal. Part memoir, part investigative journal, and part no-holds-barred behind-the-scenes "tell-all", it will be available at the beginning of 2012.

2. In case anyone is wondering, it costs money to make a good documentary. The IndieGoGo campaign is only one part of the financing for a film that will come in at just over CAD $100,000, when all is said and done. We're committed to making the best film that we can.

3. All net profits earned by my company, Redstar Films, from the sale of the film after it's done will be donated to the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada, a charitable cause near and dear to me. Just in case anyone was wondering.

4. I'll be posting various updates here throughout both the fundraising and then the filmmaking process. Some will be serious; some, like "Pitch Imperfect" will be anything but serious. That's because while I take my work seriously, I never take myself seriously.

And that, as they say, is that. Thanks to anyone who feels inclined to contribute, at any level. If you think this is a worthwhile project, Tim and I would also appreciate it if you could help spread the word to your friends, family, and anyone else you think might be interested in the film.

Keep your eyes to the sky, and your mind open!

Paul Kimball

New excerpt from rough cut of Carol Rainey's documentary "Priests of High Strangeness: Co-Creation of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon"

Even as a rough cut, this is more compelling material from Ms. Rainey.

One thing to note - while I suspect that many people will focus on "Linda Cortile's" sharing in the profits from Hopkins' work on her "case", I see nothing wrong with that, in theory. It all depends on the context, and timing.

One could just as easily say that if "Cortile" received nothing, and Hopkins was the sole person to profit from her story, that he was exploiting her for profit.

The issue of whether a witness should profit from their story, and to what extent, is not an easy question to answer, and it varies from case to case, and person to person. However, a good basic rule of thumb, at least to me, is that anyone who looks for money up front is incredibly suspect; anyone who is offered a piece of the profits by a researcher after-the-fact might not be telling the truth, but if they're lying it's probably not because they're motivated by profit.

Having said that, I'll add that the part of this segment from Ms. Rainey's rough cut that stands out to me is the story about someone trying to kidnap "Cortile" - how ridiculous the story seems on its face, and how easily and completely Hopkins swallows it, and immediately links it to her alleged "abduction".

If someone tried to grab me on the streets of New York, or anywhere else, I would report it to the police, not Budd Hopkins. Wouldn't you?

Ms. Rainey is absolutely right about one key thing: what Hopkins was engaged in wasn't objective research.

Paul Kimball

Rough Cuts

The clip above is a rough-cut excerpt from a documentary currently being made by Carol Rainey, entitled "Priests of High Strangeness."

A word about Rainey, and some of the flak I've seen her catch for releasing this rough cut. All of it, as far as I can tell, is coming from people who don't know what they're talking about. As someone who has spent the past decade making documentaries for television, I do know what I'm talking about, so let me say that there is absolutely nothing improper or even unusual about a filmmaker releasing rough cut segments from a film in progress. I've done it myself from time to time. Motivations can vary from trying to drum up interest (and possibly funding), which is part of the business, to putting the material out there to gauge reaction, which might then lead to changes in the direction of the film. There are many other reasons.

Whatever you think of Rainey or her motivations in making the film, there is nothing untoward in releasing advance footage as she has. Judge it for what it is (my take: compelling from a preliminary evidential point of view), and withhold final judgment until the film is complete.

Paul Kimball

Fields of Fear

In 2006 I made Fields of Fear, about Canadian cattle mutilation investigator Fern Belzil, for Space: The Imagination Station. Here it is in its entirety, courtesy of our distributor, Paranormal TV.

The film features Fern, as well as my friends Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern and Kevin Randle.

Paul Kimball

Stanton T. Friedman IS Real!

My first documentary as a writer / director, made for Space and Bravo in 2001, released in 2002, about UFO researcher Stan Friedman.

Paul Kimball

David Cherniack's UFOs: The Secret History

I caught the world premiere of Canadian documentary filmmaker David Cherniack's new film UFOs: The Secret History, on The History Channel here in Canada tonight. The film is must-see viewing for anyone interested in UFOs, but at the same time its accessible to the general public whose only real exposure to the UFO phenomenon has been The X-Files. A compelling, and at times lyrical, examination of the history of the UFO phenomenon and our relationship to it as a species, UFOs: The Secret History is an example of a documentary that manages to convey information in a compelling and entertaining manner, and which raises more questions than it answers. In short, it is superior filmmaking.

The film is not without flaws. Dr. Jacques Vallee and others like him are dismissed in a minute or so - Jerry Clark refers to Vallee's approach to the UFO phenomenon as "debunking with a more pretentious name", and Cherniack in his narration largely dismisses it as a result of the fascination with Eastern mysticism that arose in the counter-culture of the late 1960s. Cherniack makes a few factual errors as well - he refers to Dr. Edward Condon, for example, for example, as an astronomer, when in fact Condon was a physicist and a pioneer in quantum mechanics. I also dispute Cherniack's contention that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the first great UFO film, and a turning point where UFOs left the scientific realm and became firmly ensconced in pop culture, a conclusion that ignores a long and rich history of UFOs as part of pop culture, from Orson Welles' War of the Worlds to The Day the Earth Stood Still to Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

These are relatively small things, however, when compared with what the film gets right. It details the history of the UFO phenomenon from the late 1940s to the present day in just an hour, and manages to hit most of the high and low points along the way, from the founding of NICAP and the work of Dr. Jim McDonald on the one hand to the "swamp gas" and alien autopsy fiascos on the other. Cherniack shows how the United States Air Force and other government agencies, notably the CIA, have not been completely forthcoming about the UFO phenomenon, but he does so without the kind of rampant conspiracy theorizing that seriously marred Richard Dolan's otherwise useful book UFOs and the National Security State. Indeed, in the second half of the film, Cherniack shows how the descent of ufology into the fringe world of crashed flying saucer stories, conspiracy theorism, and the abduction phenomenon, has obscured the reality of the UFO phenomenon in the past thirty years, with the result that there is no real hope for a serious scientific inquiry into UFOs, and the UFO story gets ignored by the mainstream media now as being inherently silly.

Cherniack spends very little time on Roswell, for example (Stan Friedman gets less screen time here than he did in the ABC News documentary Seeing is Believing a couple of years ago), because at best it is inconclusive, and at worst it has proven to be a huge distraction from the search for the truth. Cherniack devotes more time to showing how Roswell led inevitably to the fraudulent MJ-12 documents than he does to the case itself, and we get to see rare clips from the legendary UFO Cover-Up Live program that featured Jaime Shandera and Bill Moore, as well as "Falcon", and stories that the aliens like Tibetan music and strawberry ice cream. That is where crashed saucer tales and things like MJ-12 have led ufology, and Cherniack wonders whether the UFO phenomenon has been deliberately manipulated to cover up what was really going on, whether extraterrestrial visitation or top secret US government testing programs.

But Cherniack is no debunker - he shows the absurdity of the US Air Force's Project Mogul explanation, for example. In one of the better segments, he also demonstrates what a pivotal moment the Colorado Project was for the serious study of the UFO phenomenon, and how it was a complete and utter scientific fraud foisted on the general public by the US Air Force and Edward Condon - much to the chagrin of many of the people who actually investigated the cases for Condon, including Dr. William Hartmann, who found the 1950 Trent photos case compelling (Hartmann appears briefly in the film).

At its core, however, UFOs: The Secret History is as much about us as it is about the UFO phenomenon. Whether UFOs are real or not isn't really the issue, he seems to be saying. It's our need to mythologize the phenomenon that's truly fascinating, and he delves into that aspect of the story with an expert hand, as he notes, for example, that whether abductions are real or not, "they were touching upon something deeply mythic". But Cherniack is not just about this angle either - like me, he is clearly convinced that there is an objective reality to the UFO phenomenon. Although he isn't quite sure what UFOs are, the hundreds of excellent cases that remain unexplained, and which feature multiple witness accounts and hard data like radar hits and other physical evidence, are impossible to ignore.

Like a great figure skater or gymnast, Cherniack completes his "routine" with a perfect ending. The version of contact that we have imagined, he says, is a myth that we have created to shield us from a reality that we have little hope of understanding, given that we may well be dealing with civilizations or intelligences millions or even billions of years more advanced than we are. As long as we are focused on crashed flying saucers, and conspiracies, and other fringe elements with no real evidence, we are truly missing what could be a very important story.

Cherniack's film demonstrates how we have held ourselves back in terms of our understanding of the UFO phenomenon through our own self-imposed perceptual limitations, and the "noise" we have ourselves created. At the same time, however, Cherniack shows us that there is still a "signal" out there worth looking for, if only we have the courage and the intellectual open-mindeness to try.

UFOs: The Secret History, is a profoundly rich and thought-provoking film, well worth repeated viewings. Here's hoping that it gets the attention that it deserves, and that people embrace a nuanced film that refuses to fall into either fundamentalist debunkery or died-in-the-wool believerism.

Paul Kimball