CLOSE ENCOUNTERS NYC-NEWS --- SPRING 2007

New!!! "JOURNAL of ABDUCTION-ENCOUNTER RESEARCH" (JAR) Launched!

********** May 1, 2007 -- An exciting new high-quality, scholarly Ufological publication focusing on the close encounter witness interface is now available on-line. The quarterly e-publication, the "Journal of Abduction-Encounter Research" (JAR), is now in cyberspace with its FREE inaugral Spring 2007 issue. JAR's mission statement reads:

"The mission of the 'Journal for Abduction-Encounter Research' is to be a global platform in which to debate the signficance of the extraterrestrial presence. JAR will publish all cogently argued points of view that give insight about who the UFO intelligences are, what they are doing, what they want, how human beings are reacting to them, and how the ET presence may influence the future of the humanity."

JAR's Editor is Susan Swiatek, and the Editorial Board Members are John Carpenter, Barbara Lamb, and Elaine Douglass, Co-Director, Utah MUFON. Douglass is well-known in the ufology community in the NYC-Metro area for her work in the 1990s with Operation Right to Know), and Barbara Lamb.

The first JAR issue is FREE (future issues are not). To get a free copy, visit www.mufonutah.com where the free download can be found. Here's the list of articles in this 34-page issue:

JEREMY VAENI's "NO ONE'S WATCHING: AN ALIEN ABDUCTEE'S STORY" MOVIE NOW ON DVD

"No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story," the movie made by experiencer Jeremy Vaeni. a NYC film and video producer, was released in May on DVD. It had its premier at The Pioneer Theater in Manhattan's East Village in March 2006.

On the eve of the DVD's release, Vaeni's movie was screened, with a Q&A, April 11, at FIONS (Friends of the Institute of Neotic Sciences) Event held The Meta Center, (214 West 29th Street, 16th floor (bet. 7th-8th Aves. 1-212-736-0999). The movie, a personal documentary, is based on Vaeni's close encounter experiences described in Vaeni's book, "Why the Aliens Don't Land." Vaeni is a columnist for "UFO Magazine," writing the "Valiens" column in the monthly magazine. The DVD has four hours of extras, including two commentary tracks.

For more information, visit www.valiens.com

'FROM OTHER WORLDS" - THE BROOKLYN UFO ABDUCTEE EXPERIENCE FILMED IN NYC! -- NOW ON DVD!

From Brooklyn to off-world vistas is the latest way to say that NYC is once again the focus of on-location movie-makers whose subject is UFOs, this time with "From Other Worlds" by Barry Strugatz

Playing for one week only at the Cinema Village (Jan.26-Feb. 1) was another close encounter experience flick made in NYC, specifically Brooklyn --- the fictional sci-fi spoofy but endearingly delighful "From Other Worlds" by writer and producer Barry Strugatz, his first film, due for DVD release in May.

Although a light comedy, what struck me is the movie-maker's generally accurate portrayal, in relation to dealing with unknown other-worldly visitations, of its two main characters: the anxiety-ridden Brooklyn housewife Joanne (Cara Buono) and an Ivory Coast immigrant, street peddler and taxi driver Abraham (Isaach De Bankole). Also, of interest is the movie is a detective story, the essential method needed to explore close encounters as it empowers their experiencers.

The movie begins with the woman having mysterious night-time visitations (bright light and being levitated out a window) and oddly unexplainable body markings. At her husband's urging, she is treated for her obsessive anxiety by a doctor, without a clue what these otherworldy episodes are about.

Things change when this bored hosuewife, living in a rut of routines, sees a TV program about UFO sightings and abductions, she learns about the fictional Kings County (Brooklyn) UFO Support Group, which meets at the Downtown Brooklyn Y on Atlantic and Third Avenues (ironically near The Flying Saucer Cafe!) The support group leader has a mildly goofy side, as do the experiencers at the meeting. It is not an accurate nor serious group meeting portrait, as Strugatz was making a light comedy. The group leader is not on paar with a Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs nor the late Dr. John Mack, telling the two starring characters that they are even a little way out there for him... at first.

The plot then unfolds with a mysterious hooded MIB-type, whose trickster behavior and synchronistic promptings lead the two main characters, after a post-support meeting talk in the City Lights Diner, on a search together and they fondly bond. They find a space alien disquised as a human, who uses various silly voices and who is patterned after 1950s Japanese sci-fi space movie aliens. But he offers the two people a mission and purpose for their being contacted, leading them to the Main City Public Library on Fifth Avenue and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where scenes were filmed inside this stellar museum, a favorite of mine. The characters are being followed by an agent determined to upset their mission.

Overall, this is not "Close Encounters," "Touched." "Communion," "Taken" nor Vaeni's rather really fine flick, -- nor is it meant to be. However, it is a charmer which may grow on viewers as the plot moves along. The interaction between Joanne and Abraham is a genuine gem to watch. Whatever Strugatz's actually thoughts on close encounters, an experience which we know so well through our own experiences is not totally clear. But he means well and "From Other Worlds" comes off well.

Being a group faciltaitor with S.P.A.C.E. (Search Project for Aspects of Close Encounters) with nearly 100 group meetings over 15 years, some of the movie rubs the wrong way in that it does not show a competent, well-run support group at first (that somewhat changes later).

But given that this is a light comedy sci-fi movie, that oversight can be pushed aside, given these factors: 1) "From Other Worlds" does portray some well-known aspects of the encounter drama which is in the public domain. 2) It was filmed in Brooklyn, NYC. 3) And it was fun, taken and enjoyed at that value. Even some (but not all!) encounter experiencers can have fun with their encounters, turning on the humor or seeing the humor they may find in it. Standing on it own without comparing it to the starkly mysterious and profound reality of the UFO Experience, I liked "From Other Worlds." It's worth seeing more than once, for it's a feel-good movie not to be taken seriously but enjoyed for what it is.

Mo Flam's cinemtography was actually excellent, as well as the enchanting musical score by Pierre Foldes. It is a true New Yorker's movie with a Brooklyn accent on the positive.

It was wrongly panned by reviewers here in The New York Times, Daily News, and the Village Voice, but was given a respectable two stars by Newsday and amNY, and the Post passed on it. Posted below is a rather good review, three and one-half stars, by Rory Aronsk on the "Film Threat" website.

The DVD is now available, since earl May. Jeremy Vaeni interviewed Strugatz about the movie for Vaeni's "Valiens" column in the May 2007 issue of "UFO Magazine."

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MARS-1 ARTIST @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC, 3/31-4/28, 2007

MARS-1 (aka Mario Martinez), a widely praised San Francisco-based artist with a "deep interest in ufology and extraterrestrials," recently had an amazing exhibit of his paintings and sculptures at the popular Jonathan LeVine Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 9th floor (9E), in Manhattan, NY March 31-April 28, 2007. The opening reception for the MARS-1 and another exhibition, DALEK featuring his "Space Monkey" artworks, with the artists was held on March 31. For more information, visit www.jonathanlevinegallery.com.

Mars-1's artwork, according to his website, is "described as urban-Gothic and sci-fi abstraced." His art "explores the possibilities of other-worldy existence," With his intense interest in UFOs and ETs, Mars-1's artwork "examines the mysteriousness of the universe and the abstract qualities of existence," according to his website. He also makes designer toys.

He has been featured in magazines such as Heads, Super7 and Defrag, amog others, and his work is included in a book titled "Convergence" published by 2nd Round Productions in 2006.

The artist DALEK is Brooklyn-born James Marshall, who, like MARS-1, started as a street graf artist. Although not UFO-related, his exhibit features his Space Monkeys artwork (see interview below).

"THE LAST MIMZY" -- THE ET-UFO CONNECTION

"The Last Mimzy" - New Line Cinema's latest movie from director Bob Shaye, out in theaters everywhere on March 23 - has a subtle UFO-ET connection which encounter witnesses may detect.

This delightful and suspenseful charming sci-fi family fantasy flick, based on a popular science fiction short story written back in 1943 by the married writing team known as Lewis Padgett, stars Timothy Hutton and and Joely Richardson as the parents of two wunderkind aka Star Kids, Noah, age-10, (played by Chris O'Neil) and Emma, age-5, (played by Rhiannon Leigh Wryn), who live in Seattle. Washing in from the sea, these gifted children discover an odd, high-tech, quantumly equipped "toy treasure chest" with an outer layer of triangles. Whle developing enhanced intellgence and paranormal abilties from their interaction with this futuristic toy chest, they learn that it is a kind of "FED EX" package dispatched through a time tunnel by a scientist in the future from a dying Earth, due to an environmental catastrophy.

This future Earth needs something pure and unpolluted from humans from our time to save a humanity on the brink of extinction. This odd package, containing a stuffed toy rabbit (there's a definate "Alice Through the Looking Glass" link stated in the movie), links the present and future by constructing a wormhole (a Einstein-Rosen Bridge).

The rabbit is called "Mimzy," a nonsense character mentioned in the "Jabberwocky" poem by Lewis Carroll. ET-Intelligences, scientists recently wrote in a science paper published in the prestigious "Nature" science journal, may prefer communicating through such Cosmic "Fed-Ex Packages" rather than using primitive radio-TV signals and lasers.

Although not stated by these scientists in their paper, UFOs and Close Encounters act as "Fed-Ex Packages" delivering information from unknown, otherwordly cultures, which witrnesses experience, interprete in their cultural context and by their personal makeup, and who are downloaded, at times, with that information, often stirring up an almost, anxiety-driven obsessive-like search for answers, either from outward explanations or, more telling, stirring from deep within themselves in their own journeys for truth.

"The Last Mimzy" -- with themes derived from the movies "Close Encounters," "ET" and "Little Buddha" -- has major elements of the "WOW! Contact" highlighted as fully described in "The Project Wonderland Chronicles."

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DR. JOHN MACK'S INVESTIGATION OF 1994 ARIEL SCHOOL UFO ENCOUNTER VIDEO PROGRAM BEING READIED

In 1994 the late Dr. John Mack, author and founder of PEER, went to Zimbabwe to investigate a remarkable UFO sighting and close encounter of the third kind at the Ariel School in Ruwa.

There he interviewed, between Nov. 28 and Dec. 6, 1994, several school children, ages eight to 12, and faculty members about their encounter at a school recess. A video was made of the interviews, portions of which were shown by PEER at various events.

Now a video program documentary is being produced by Dominique Callimanopulos, an anthropologist and counseling psychologst who, as a PEER research associate, went to the Ariel School with Dr. Mack. The documentary is currently being edited by actor and filmmaker Randy Nickerson here in NYC. A fund-raising effort is ongoing now with the film's release expected within a year. As explained on the John E. Mack Institute website:

"The interviews constitute one of the most impressive UFO sightings and close encounters in recent history and serve as an exemplary demonstration of the interviewing skills and sensitivity of Dr. John Mack when working with people reporting extraordinary experiences. The goal in producing the video program is to preserve the historical record of a compelling case in a format that can be accessible to students and educators."

S.P.A.C.E. hopes to promote the video project here in NYC. For more information, visit the John. E. Mack Institute Ariel video project link below: