CLOSE ENCOUNTERS NEWS -- Page 3

"MYSTERIOUS SKIN" MOVIE: HUMAN AND ALIEN CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

By Harold Egeln

Friday, June 3, 2005 -- Sometimes movie makers can bring in a bit of the UFO experience into their films which are not promoted as UFO movies, as what seems to have been done with "Donnie Darko" by director Richard Kelly. In "Darko," although UFO encounters were not mentioned, they seem to have been placed covertly "between the lines," or film frames, either by design or as an subconscious undercurrent on the filmmaker's part.

While the popular space movie hits "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" and "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" attract crowds, and with "War of the Worlds" (June 29) and the space-themed "Shark-Boy" (June 10) just around the corner, on May 6 a brilliant new movie, "Mysterious Skin" by Gregg Araki based on the 1995 novel by writer Scott Heim, with an overt UFO encounter subplot, has been drawing an enthusiastic audience. And not necessarily a "space movie" crowd at all.

Praised by some critics as one of the year's best movies, such as by A.O. Scott at The New York Times ("Seeking Adult Answers In Two Scarred Boyhoods" May 6, page E13), it debuted on May 6 at an art-house movie theatre here in New York City, the Film Forum, at 209 West Houston Street west of Sixth Avenue in Soho, and in theaters on the West Coast.

The hauntingly beautiful, harshly disturbing and sensitively sophisticated 99-minute film, rated NC-17, bravely revolves around the consequences of the sexual abuse victimization of two eight-year-old boys in Kasas in 1981 by their Little League coach, as narrated by them at age 18 in 1991.

One is Neil McCormick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the alien boy in NBC's "Third Rock from the Sun" series), who is later a nihilistic, amoral gay teen hustler with mixed feelings about the incidents, which he remembers. His part as an eight-year-old is played by Chase Ellison.

The other is Brian Lackey, played by Brady Corbet (from the "Thunderbirds" and "Thirteen" movies), who is later a nerdy, shy asexual teen with confused and repressed memories about the incidents.

Both are taken advantage of by Little League coach Heider, played by Bill Sage, who is portrayed as a humanized exploiter attracted to the forbidden. Brian as a child is played by George Webster. The child actors' roles were handled by the film makers in gingerly ways that would not harm nor offend them, given the topic of childhood molestation.

Early on in the movie, two nights after Brian has his first episode of five hours of missing time and a nosebleed after the coach takes him to his home when a baseball game is rained-out (a trip Brian does not remember), he, his mother and sister witness a huge flying saucer close up.

The blue-colored glowing UFO glides silently in the night sky over their yard and house, magically shown in the movie. They are all in awe of this beautiful sighting, which inspires a moment of wonder. And haunts young Brian, influencing his unremembered trauma, making him ponder about a possible connection between the UFO and his missing time episode.

For Brian, it's the beginning of a soul-searching journey to recover repressed memories of his traumatic mysterious encounter, and vague memories of another boy being involved, who he later discovers to be Neil. But his journey of self-discovery is colored by the blue-colored glasses of it being a possible UFO close encounter rather than an unwelcomed human encounter.

Ten years after all this, he and his mother watch a TV special called, "World of Mystery: UFO Abductions." There are UFO witnesses describing their disturbing encounters, noting their scars and marks, missing time and implants. One of the witnesses is a self-professed UFO abductee Avalyn Friesen, played by Mary Lynn Rayskub (of TV's "24" series).

She lives in the small farming community of Inman, 30 miles from Hutchinson. Brian, needing a connection and support, writes to her and visits her. She shares her apparent UFO encounters, all recalled under hypnosis, showing him a scar on her thigh, and, later, she shows him a mutilated cow drained of blood and missing its reproductive organs, mentioning the catte mutilations and strange lights seen at night in the area.

Brian shares with her his dream journal, which depicts aliens and UFOs on its covers, and his sketches of them inside. He uses the journal to aid him in recovering his buried and vaguely remembered memories, retrieved as flashbacks in his dreams.

These include dreams of space aliens hovering over him on a table, and fingers on his face, which seem sometimes to be thin grey-blue alien fingers and at other times human fingers, hence the title "Mysterious Skin." Brian figures that he is a UFO abductee, like the young woman, because of their common indicators of abduction, and her being convinced of Brian's being like her. Brian later has a falling-out with Avalyn due to a perceptual shift in what may be the actual source of his memories, and her insistence that he is an abductee.

Brian seeks out Neil, after discovering that he is the other boy in his dreams. Before meeting Neil, then in New York City, Brian makes friends with Eric Pederson (played excellently by Jeff Licon). Eric, who loves Neil, believes he is telepathic and is open to UFO abduction concepts, which puts Brian at ease. Brian finally hook-ups with Neil, a gay teen prositute, when he returns from New York City. There he suffered a horrific human encounter in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. When they meet, what actually happened to Brian is slowly revealed in some of the movie's most sensitive scenes.

Parts of the movie, taking place in a small town in Kansas and Manhattan, are hard-hitting and rough because of the sexual abuse element. The most graphic, bloody sequence is like one in 1969's "Midnight Cowboy" between Jon Voight and his trick, played by Bernard Hughes (who played Dr. Benjamin Simon, the psychiatrist in the 1975 TV movie "The UFO Incident" about Betty and Barney Hill). But the graphic scene in the new movie is more upsetting. I had to close my eyes.

The relentless violence in the new "Star Wars" movie is worse and in "Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy" the Earth is destroyed, only to be restored fully intact later. And general TV and movie violence (the 21st Century's Circus Maximus) is now commonplace, to the dismay of many peace-loving people such as myself.

As a contrast, other segments in "Mysterious Skin" are dream-like and beautifully rendered. At times the movie is sinister, inspiring, terrifying, terrific, brutal, tender, grim and lyrical. The span of human emotions is impressive and affecting, told with the skill of director Araki adapting the suberb wordsmith work of book author Heim. It is perfect teamwork, suited to the talents of both Araki and Heim, and executed so well by the cast.

"Mysterious Skin" is based upon the 1995 novel by Scott Heim, who was born in Hutchinson, Kansas on September 26, 1966. (Which happens to be a key date in my own life!) In 2003 the book was made into a stage production, complete with the UFO subplot in the play. More on this soon.

While partially a close encounter movie, the rivetting gay cinematic "Mysterious Skin" is a film that most Ufologists are very likely to miss entirely, clueless to the UFO subplot in it, even though it touches upon the subject that interests them the most. More likely to pickup on the movie are astute UFO witnesses, actutely attuned by experience to the close encounter subplot in their own lives.

And that may be because the filmmaker, the author and the playwright all have real-life UFO connections and/or interests themselves, as we shall now examine.

OZ COMES TO KANSAS: THE UFO FACTOR BEHIND "MYSTERIOUS SKIN"

THE AUTHOR, SCOTT HEIM

Heim grew-up first in Hutchinson and then in Lawrence, Kansas, and his grandparents lived on a small farm in Inman. As noted, Hutchinson and Inman are in the movie. His 1995 novel is not really autobiographical and Heim did not suffer molestation nor was he a hustler, he has said. However, he told an interviewer in the "Gay City" newspaper that he included parts of his life experiences in the characters of Neil and Brian, in terms of their behavior.

And the UFO sighting in the book and movie is based on a very real experience, as noted in the "Timeline" section of Hein's website autobiography.

"8.75 (Aug. 1975) - Along with mom Donna and older sister Tamyra, watched UFO hovering over family farmhouse in Inman, Kansas."

In the 1990s, while living in New York City, Heim made a trip back home, and he writes: "8.94 (Aug. 1994) - On a trip back to Lawrence, Kansas, had dinner in the house of William S. Burroughs, discussing UFO conspiracy theories."

Heim moved to New York City in 1991, when he entered Columbia University Graduate School for his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Writing. He first lived in Manhattan, and then, in October 1996, he moved Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where he stayed until he left the city for Boston in September 2002, when he was 36. His Writing degree thesis was "Mysterious Skin," which he said he put together from a series of short stories he wrote. In 1995 it was published as his first novel by HarperCollins Publishers.

In January 1995, in a New York Times Magazine feature cover artcle, Heim was one of the "30 Artists Under the Age of 30" profiled as one of the 30 to "watch" for the next 30 years. We are now a third of the way into that timespan, and Heim is being noticed by a wider audience, thanks to Araki's marvelous screen adaption of Heim's beautifully evocative book.

Heim was named the ninth top writing talent in 2000 by The Publishing Triangle, an organization of gay and lesbian writers, editors and publishers based in New York City. In 1997 he came out with his second novel, "In Awe," and his poems were also published in an anthology in 1999. He is getting ready to publish his third novel, "We Disappeared" in the near-future.

From New York City Heim moved to Boston. One may wonder, during his time living here in New York, from Autumn 1991 to Autumn 2002, if his interest in the UFO subject took him to the many meetings, conferences, lectures and events held here by various close encounter groups and researchers, of which there are a variety. Or, if not, what may have he experienced of the topic in other ways?

THE PLAYWRIGHT, PRINCE GOMOLIVAS

In San Francisco three years ago Hime's "Mysterious Skin" was made into a play. The playwright who wrote the stage adaptation was Prince Gomolivlas, who was attracted by the material.

The play was staged, to critical acclaim, at The New Conservatory Center in San Francisco, and it had the UFO-related scenes and subplot, just like in the current movie adaptation.

One critic, in a review in the "San Francisco Chronicle," said of the playwright and the portrayal of the Brian character: "Like Brian, Gomollivlas has long been fascinated by the supernatural and UFOs."

Heim first worked on making his novel into a film script back in 1997, but the project was tabled. Then steps in the movie maker.

THE FILMMAKER, GREGG ARAKI

Araki has been known as "the bad boy" of gay cinema for his earlier films, until now when critics tell us that he has "matured" with his directing talents flowering in "Mysterious Skin."

A previous movie, "Nowhere" in 1997 and available on DVD now, had a character named Montgomery. He gets abducted by space aliens in the movie, labled a "Generation X" movie, with touches of Samuel Beckett-like absurdities.

Araki's earlier movies, including "The Living End," "Doom Generation" and "Splender," were created from his own material, while "Mysterious Skin" is based on someone else's material, which attracted Araki to adapt it to the big screen.

TRAUMA + WONDER = MYSTERY

The old saying goes, "The Butcher, the Baker and the Candle-stick Maker." With this UFO subject played in the minor key in a book, a play and a movie called "Mysterious Skin," we have the UFO version of the old saying with the Novelist. the Playwright and the Filmmaker.

It is a truly remarkabe collaboration, stunningly played out in this courageous movie now, and it is extra remarkable for the close encounter witness to experience this sparkingly gem of a movie, perhaps aiding them in their own search and detective work.

While certainly not at all like the movies "Close Encounters" nor "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and not promoted as primarily a UFO movie, "Mysterious Skin" gets under the skin of the UFO phenomenon with its probing of how people are affected by the subject as witnesses.

"And don't be put off by the mumbo-jumbo about aliens and the cosmos. It all works," writes David Kennerley in his excellent in-depth film review in the "Gay City" weekly of May 5-11, 2005 ("When Coaches Attack" pages 28 and 31).

As with UFO interfacers, there is the confusion of what kind of trauma they experienced which is acted out in the case of Brian from an unsolicited sexual intrusion, first believed to be alien then to be found human.

Was Brian's and his family's UFO sighting, putting them all in awe (and maybe easing Brian's unremembered pain of two days before), a coincidence? Or was it staged at that specific time for a purpose for Brian, for unknown reasons?

Trauma and awe, together.

"Mysterious Skin" in its three forms of expression stands as revealing testimony to what close encounter witnesses experience in their own journeys to uncover the origins of the mystery that underlies their lives. It stakes out the landmarks on their journeys, even though Brian had a mix of human (the coach) and alien (the UFO) to ponder, trying to determine what was real and unreal.

That is why it may appeal to close encounter witnesses, whatever form their experience of the enigma takes.

Unfortunately, popular ufologists, as we noted earlier, may miss out on this tome for their own research, and not listen to what we say about this movie nor to the people who put "Mysterious Skin" into the public eye. You will probably not see anything about the movie, including this review offered to them and then rejected, on any ufologist's website (with at least one notably fine exception: Filer's Files). It would be a delight if that changes, but it really does not matter to us, we who are the witnesses, being our "own detectives" as stated in Heim's book.

Yes, the film, book and play are superbly crafted stories told by a gifted and sensitive writer, who happens to be openly gay, like a number of encounter witnesses but very few researchers.

Writer Kennerley's review in the "Gay City" newspaper was accompanied by a second in-depth article, "Gay Novel's Successful Screen Adaptation - An Author and Director Discuss Making the Leap from Page to Screen," by Ronen Tal (pages 28 and 31.) It gives further insight into the collaboration of Araki and Heim, offering a view of the "refreshing" bravery of the Neil character, refusing to be a victim of what is otherwise a traumatic experience for a child.

While Heim's book and Araki's movie, with its excellent cast and well-placed ambient music, speak to the ways and effects of small town life and the conflicts and yearnings for something more fulfilling that it brings to sensitve young people, it touches the chords of what makes us human and how we may seek better ways of living in a harsh, indifferent world.

Perhaps the UFO sighting, both the fictional one in the movie and book, and the actual one in 1975 seen by Heim and his family, show a way to recovery and rebirth, a new creation transcending trauma. "Mysterious Skin," ultimately, uplifts like the UFO that flew over on one Kansas night.

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In June and July "Mysterious Skin" opens in other cities across the United States. In New York City it also opened at the Kew Gardens Cinema in Queens on June 3 and opens at the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Rose Cinema on June 10. On May 27 it opened in California, in Los Anegles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Pasadena, Irvine, San Jose and Long Beach.

On June 3 it also opened in Chicago, Salt Lake City and Malverne, NY. On June 10 it opens in Tuscan and San Rafael; June 17 in Seattle, Denver and Petaluma, Ca; June 20, New Paltz, NY; June 24: Boston, New Haven, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Portland, Or, Sacramento, Washington DC, San Diego, Palm Springs, Ca., St. Louis, Mo., and Nashville.

July openings include San Antonio, Hoston, Dallas, Austin, Kansas City, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Lexington, Louisville and elsewhere, into August. Full details are on the official movie website below.

Before its release by Tartan Films on May 6, it was screened to critically acclaim at the Venice, Toronto and London Film Festivals, and more recently, at the TriBeCa Film Festival here in New York City. It is rated NC-17, so we advise discretion.

Below is a list of essential links to "Mysterious Skin," Scott Heim and Gregg Araki, that should be read for a fuller understanding of this excellent movie, rated "four flying saucers" by this writer.

Immediately following the list of links is also a review of Heim's book, hopefully bringing further insight into the current movie.

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MYSTERIOUS SKIN

CAST: Brady Corbet as Brian Lackey, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Neil McCormick, Michelle Trachtenberg as Wendy Pederson, Jeff Licon as Eric Pederson, Bill Sage as Coach, Mary-Kynn Rajakub as Avalyn Friesen, Elizabeth Shue as Ellen McCormick, Lisa Long as Mrs. Lackey, Chris Mulkey as Mr. Lackey, George Webster as Brian the child, and Chase Ellison as Neil the child.

DIRECTOR and EDITOR: Gregg Araki, who wrote the screenplay based on Scott Heim's novel; PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR: Steve Gainer; MUSIC: Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie; PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Devorah Herbert; PRODUCERS: Mary Jane Skalski, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Gregg Araki; RELEASE by Tartan Films and TLA Releasing. Running time: 1 hour and 39 minutes.

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"MYSTERIOUS SKIN" - HEIM'S BOOK AND THE UFO THEME: A Retro-Review

By Harold Egeln

New York City, Sunday, June 5, 2005 -- The current film release of "Mysterious Skin" brings a look here at the book that Gregg Araki's movie is based upon. Largely his movie is faithful to the author's book, wonderfully transforming the well-written words into well-rendered images, with only very minor changes.

Scott Heim's book was published by HarperCollins Publishers here in New York City in 1995, and completely escaped our attention back then, which should not have happened given its UFO subplot.

But, unlike UFO books, it was not written nor announced to the UFO community, as far I know. This is not the first time this has happened, as other books and movies with close encounter elements not designed directly for the "speculation" market, are usually missed by Ufologists.

The paperback edition of "Mysterious Skin" was first published by Harper Perennial in 1996 and has now been re-issued this year in connection with the movie's release, showing actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Neil McCormick on the front book cover.

I have just finished reading "Mysterious Skin," bought at the treasured Oscar Wilde Bookstore, in the city since 1967. The book is beautifully written, heart-wretching and sensitvely sensuous with a deep sense of humanity, not only as a gay genre book but as a mass market novel, recommended for a wide audience.

It has not only the scenes relating to UFOs and abduction imagery that the movie has, but more detailed information, as expected, about author Heim's knowledge of the close encounter subject, naturally an interest to him since his own multi-witnessed UFO sighting back in 1975 when he was nearly nine.

Viewing a UFO does not necessarily make a witness an abductee. But it can and, in Heim's instance, it does have an impact which shows throughout the book. As is known, UFO stuff is part of popular culture, in the media, on TV and in movies and books, and in commercial products and ads.

Heim's book includes references to Betty and Barney Hill's famous abduction in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in September 1961 (page 153 of the Harper Perennial edition), and the well-publicized abduction of fishermen Calvin Parker and Charlie Hickson in Pascagoula, Mississippi in October 1973 during a major national UFO flap.

Of the later, the book, in the words of Brian Lackey [each of the book's 18 chapters is told alternatively in the words of the book's prime characters], says: "I always remembered this story -- first, because it happened almost exactly one year after I was born, and second because the description of the craft -- platelike, with blinking blue lights -- resembled my own UFO." (page 105)

There is a major indirect reference to the first book, "Missing Time," of famed research Budd Hopkins in New York City. That reference is to a book called "Stolen Time" by the fictious "Ren Bloomfield, psychologist and self-possesed 'spiritual counselor.'" This comes on page 100 in a news article he is reading about an upcoming UFO TV special about a Avalyn Friesen, whose alleged experiences were retrieved under hypnosis, and the article lists of six signs hinting at possible alien encounters.

These are unaccounted-for spans of time, powerful recurrent nightmares of being examined by aliens, unexplained marks and nosebleeds, feelings of being monitored, fear of the dark and an almost obsessive interest in UFOs. Brian noted that he can identified with items number one, three and six. This section precedes the bit in the chapter about the TV special "World of Mystery: Alien Abductions," mentioned in our movie review.

The blue-glowing nighttime UFO witnessed by Brian, his mother and sister is placed in 1981, the year Hopkins' "Missing Time" was published. In fact, this novel taking place in the 1980s and 1991 is significant, It is divided into three parts: "Blue: 1981, 1983, 1987," "Gray: Summer 1991" and "White: Autumn-Winter1991."

The significance is the great amount of material on UFO stealth encounters in the public domain at this time, such as Hopkins' two best=selling books, including "Intruders: The Incredible Visitaions at Copely Woods" in 1987, and Whitley Strieber's immense best-seller "Communion: A True Story," as well as books by Ray Fowler on the "Betty Andreasson Affair" and "The Watchers." During this time author Heim was mostly in his teens. Also, note that the movie "Donnie Darko," analyzed here in CEN recently and the "Project Wonderland Chronicles" last year, took place in 1988.

"BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE" -- Avalyn to Brian

The importance of dream journals, as also told in the movie, is detailed in the book, with Brian Lackey noting: "I kept the journal at bedside and during the following week I logged what I could from each alien scenario, sometimes sketching a face or a hand or beam of light." He then recounts a dream. "The dream log aided my memory... I began recalling other bits and pieces about my first abduction... I knew the information that tangled like wire inside my head was all-important clues that moved toward some destination." That's a statement that most witnesses can also say.

Problem is, these series of dreams began two days after Brian viewed the UFO TV special with images of aliens seemingly "equivalent to the Hollywood depictions I'd seen on TV."

While people with unremembered or partly remembered stealth encounters do see images that Brian reports, there are other recurrent images that do no necessarily depict aliens and UFOs, but clues like trains, circuses and clowns, silos, and fire-engines, among others. These are not told of in the novel.

In fact, Brian's dreams take him into another direction of victimization as the alien imagery fades. And the book, like the movie, uncovers the true origins of his haunting memories.

This conclusion can be seized upon by close encounter debunkers and skeptics as a tome on their idea that a more human source may be behind the UFO abduction sceanrio recovered by researchers and witnesses. Whatever the origin of Brian's memories, which is revealed in the movie and book, the UFO still remains a haunting ikon of a deeper mystery, of which the charcter Brian, like author Heim, had an actual experience.

While Neil McCormick, the young teen hustler and prostitute, shares a common bond with Brian, who seeks Neil out when they are 18, it is not the glue of a UFO stealth encounter. Neil knows what happened. The story of Neil's and Brian's coming together is movingly told, in a Christmas Eve setting, in Heim's book and Araki's film adaption of the book.

It is a very human story of deep emotion and meaning, a journey of introspection filled with illusion and truth, and the harsh and tender beauty of self-discovery and hopes of ascendency beyond the often brutish ways of humanity on this strange planet Earth.

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THE COSMOSPHERE

The book also reveals that Hutchinson is the home of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, which features an IMAX Dome Theater, the Justice Planetarium and a reproduction of American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard's lab, along with a space museum and space store.

The museum contains many interesting space history artifacts, including the Odyssey command module from the nearly disasterous Apollo 13 lunar spaceflight.

In Heim's book, character Eric Preston, in chapter eight, calls it "a boring space museum" (page 115). A more complete description of the Cosmosphere comes in chapter eleven as described by Brian Lackey.

In the book, Brian and Avalyn drive to the Cosmosphere, described on pages 176-to-178 of the Harper Perennial edition. "The Cosmosphere building, a mammouth chocolate-covered octagon, sat near the community college," he notes.

Brian describes the set-up of the center's space store, told in a delightfully entertaining paragraph, noting one model kit for which children can build their own model UFO Avalyn says: "'They don't know what they're getting into.'"

There's a description of the Cosmosphere's domed theater, as it tells of the auditorium growing dark and a night sky show appears on the domed ceiling, with a show about the history of flight. But, Brian notes, "Nothing concerning extraterrestrial life was materlized" in the show.

So, in Heim's book, there is the additional influence of the Cosmosphere space center and museum on his life, being a place for tourists in his small town of Hutchinson. (We feature its website on the links list above, and will include it in the "Spaceship Gaia Explorer Newsletter" soon.)

Truly, inner space and outer space, along with their interaction, fanciful and factual, are explored in Heim's gorgeously written book.

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BBC RADIO 4 PROGRAM ON DR. JOHN MACK, June 8... "EXPERIENCERS" ON FRENCH-BELGIUM TV, June 13

"Abduction, Alienation and Reason," a program about the late Dr. John Mack, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the evenng of June 8. An article by Angela Hine of Pier Productions about the broadcast is on the link below.

On Monday, June 13 there was a documentary called "Experiencers" by Stephane Aillix to be shown on the 13E Rue TV cable/satellite system in France and Belgium. It featured several experiencers who worked with Dr. Mack and a brief look at Dr. Mack, who was killed by a car in London in September 2004. Information is on the Mack Institute link below.

PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITNESSES RELEASED

Sunday, June 5, 2005 -- A new university-based study of close encounter witnesses was released on June 4 in England at the Developing Perspectives on Anomalous Experiences Conference at the Liverpool University College.

The study, "Psychology and Parapsychology of the Alien Contact Experience," was done over the past year by the Anomalous Experience division of the Psychology Department of Goldsmith's College at the University of London.

The division does anomalous research in several specifc areas and is headed by Professor Christopher French. Also involved were Julia Santomauro, Victoria Hamilton, Rachel Fox and Michael Thalbourne.

(Posted below are responses from the John E. Mack Institute JEMI in Cambridge, Massachusetts, placed here after the date of this item, with an insightful piece by Will Beuche of JEMI.)

For more information about the June 4 conference in Liverpool and the study, please check the following website: http://www.hope.ac.uk/anomalousexperience/programme.htm

BRAZIL AIR FORCE SHARES UFO INFORMATI0N WITH RESEARCHERS

**** A.J. Gevaerd, editor of Brazil's UFO Magazine and head of he Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers, meets with Brigadier Telles Ribeiro of the Brazilian Air Force on May 20.

Brazilia, Brazil, May 20, 2005 -- Meetings took place today between top UFO researchers and Brazilian Air Force officers, who shared mlitary files on UFOs with the researchers for the first time, with discussions on how the military tracks UFOs. A.J. Gevaerd, the editor of the Brazil UFO Magazine and head of the Brazilian Committee of UFO Researchers, led the group and filed this report for worldwide media release. "May 20 was an historic day for Ufology in Brazil and in the wolrd as the Brazilian Air Force, for the very first time in its history, officially received a committee of top UFO researchers to openly discuss sightings in the country and fully exam classified UFO documents and several military facilities in Brazilia, the federal capitol. "By doing this very important step, the Air Force has placed Brazil on a very short list of countries whose militaries acknowledge Ufology as a serious activitiy and signifcant effort to fully understand the nature and origins of UFOs. "'We want to have all information on this subject, that was withheld for decades, fully released to the public, through the UFO community," declared Brigadier Telles Ribeiro, chief of Brazil's Air Force Command Center." The Freedom of Information Campaign, launched by the Brazil UFO Magazine in April 2004, was a success, said Gevaerd. Researchers first visited CINDACTA, the Integrated Center of Air Defense Air Traffic Control, where the met Ribeiro. Then they visited the Brazilian Air Defense Command, where they met Brigadier Atheneu Azambuja. They were told that the Air Force has tracked UFOs, called "H Traffic," since 1954. The Committee members were also shown folders with files from 1954, 1977 and 1986 of very significant UFO cases.