I Study UFOs and This Is the Best UFO Documentary Ever Made

[ExoNews Update] 

Article by MJ Banias                     October 16, 2019                       (vice.com)

• On October 22nd the UFO documentary Witness of Another World, premiered on Vimeo and Amazon Prime.  (see 1:50 minute trailer below)  Directed by Alan Stivelman, the film is distributed by 1091 Media, formerly the Orchard, which has an established line-up of documentaries that focus on the paranormal and the ufological.

• The writer, MJ Banias, likes this movie because it focuses on “the people at the center of the frenzy, and the trauma they experience.” He says it is “the best documentary on the subject that I have ever seen.”

• Stivelman set out to make a different UFO documentary. But the film ended up being an allegory about the deleterious effect that a famous UFO sighting in South America in 1978 had on young boy named Juan Pérez. As the documentary shows, it marked him for the rest of his life and ruined Pérez’s life. Stivelman’s Witness of Another World is successful because it really isn’t about UFOs, but about the people who have alleged encounters with them.

• What the film portrays is a man who is living alone, emotionally and socially removed from his peers and family, still haunted by his alien encounter and wondering “why he had to have lived through that.” Watching Pérez break down on camera is one of the film’s most powerful moments. Says Stivelman, “It’s deep, emotional, and filmed in a way that fully encompasses what the abduction experience must’ve felt like. The film’s also shot more like a feature than a documentary with beautiful reenactments. This really set the title apart from the rest in the genre…” said Jim Martin, Vice President of Paranormal Content for 1091 Media.

• The film also features Jacques Vallée who interviewed Pérez when he was a boy, and has since held a firm conviction that the young gaucho had an encounter with a non-human intelligence. But since the film is about Pérez’s experience, it still works even if you don’t believe the UFO premise. Stivelman says that the audience is left “to draw their own conclusions.”

• [Editor’s Note]  MJ Banias is right where the Deep State wants mainstream media journalists to be – admitting that there is too much evidence to deny the existence UFOs but not willing to admit to the bigger picture, i.e.: that UFOs are integral to the extraterrestrial presence. For the past seventy years, the Deep State has been actively denying and covering up the true existence of ET-controlled UFOs and our secret space program which interacts with these beings, and instilling this falsehood as ‘rational’. Apparently, Banias has been guzzling the Deep State’s rhetorical kool aid for so long that he is brainwashed, along with the majority of the public.

Banias starts this article by stating: “I have seen a lot of UFO documentaries, and after a while, they start to get boring. They tend to tell the same old stories, or promote some snake-oil-selling UFO “expert.” Then Banias says, “UFO documentaries usually make the same mistake: they try to “prove” that UFOs are real, or that they are alien, or interdimensional, or paranormal, or something else. They all inevitably fail.” Here Banias reveals his bias against UFO researchers whom he compares to “snake-oil salesmen”.

Banias says that the movie is saved because it doesn’t focus on the silly notion of UFOs, but the people who’s lives are negatively affected because they believed in UFOs. The UFO, says Banias, is “really just a MacGuffin”, or a plot device, and the viewer isn’t required to believe any of it. The moral here is that believing in UFOs will end up ruining your life.

Not two weeks after this article was published, Banias again displayed his Deep State mindset in an October 29th Vice article titled: “QAnon and UFO Conspiracies Are Merging” in which he casts aspersions against UFO researchers such as Jordan Sather, Michael Salla and Steven Greer. In this more recent article, Banias attacks the government insider group known as ‘QAnon’ for spreading ‘disinformation’ that the Deep State is hiding the UFO/extraterrestrial presence from the public. Banias belittles both the “UFO conspiracy” and the “QAnon conspiracy”, branding their common link as “particularly dangerous”.

Banias says, “[Q] is beginning to find an audience among UFO hunters and people who believe the government is hiding aliens.” He touts the Deep State position that UFO and aliens are a figment of the imagination, that there is no such thing as a “secret space program”, and that the US government is innocent of any cover-up to prevent UFO/ET “Disclosure”.

According to Banias, it isn’t the Deep State government that has been using the media to mind-control the public into ridiculing and rejecting the UFO/ET reality, but it is this conspiracy movement itself that is “sewing discord and mistrust in established institutions, such as the government or military, [as] a known tool of psychological warfare and social engineering. Conspiracies, conspiracy theorists and those individuals who promote them can be far from harmless,” says Banias.

And then, incredibly, Banias employs yet another notorious Deep State tactic in its mind-control playbook by the triggering the public’s fear that the Russians are behind QAnon in order to “generate mistrust within [an American] populace”.

In rebuttal to Banias’ outrageous accusations, Jordan Sather responded to Banias’ article in an episode of Sather’s ‘Destroying the Illusion” YouTube channel (see 44:35 minute video below). Likewise, Dr Michael Salla posted a scathing article on ExoPolitics.org and ExoNews.org (see Salla’s article here) pointing out that QAnon has revealed how compromised “journalists” are compensated for following the “talking points” that the Deep State sends to journalist’s private email accounts at 4 am each morning to control their “news commentary”. Dr Salla also points out that the UK intelligence community, as well as the other “Five Eyes” nations’ intelligence agencies, regularly targets and destroys the reputation of anyone contesting the Deep State’s talking points. Indeed, this has been a Deep State policy since the CIA/Robertson Panel’s “Durant Report” in 1953, recommending that the mass media ‘evoke a strong psychological reaction’ by debunking so-called “flying saucers”.

As Dr Salla puts it, “Banias is merely providing a new twist to the decades-long psychological warfare policy of discrediting UFO researchers and reports.” These two recent articles by MJ Banias, both published on the Vice.com website, “suggests he is either simply naïve or has begun receiving 4 am talking points”.

44:35 minute rebuttal against MJ Banias by Jordan Sather (‘Destroying the Illusion’ Youtube channel)

I have seen a lot of UFO documentaries, and after a while, they start to get boring. They tend to tell the same old stories, or promote some snake-oil-selling UFO “expert.” Perhaps the biggest issue I take with UFO documentaries is that they never focus on what actually matters: the people at the center of the frenzy, and the trauma they experience.

By this measure, Alan Stivelman’s film Witness of Another World is the best documentary on the subject that I have ever seen.
Witness of Another World tells the story of Juan Pérez, a lonely gaucho who, as a young boy, allegedly had an encounter with an anomalous aerial vehicle and the strange entities inside. In the 1970s, this incident made headline news in South America and, as the documentary shows, very much ruined Pérez’s life. The film dives into Pérez’s life 40 years later. Living alone, Pérez is still haunted by his alleged encounter.

“In the beginning, I proposed to make this film in order to decode the mystery behind the UFO phenomenon,” said Stivelman. “This mission was overshadowed by the acute sadness that Juan brought with him and the desire to understand why he had to have lived through that supernatural experience that marked him for the rest of his life.”

UFO documentaries usually make the same mistake: they try to “prove” that UFOs are real, or that they are alien, or interdimensional, or paranormal, or something else. They all inevitably fail. Stivelman’s Witness of Another World is successful because it really isn’t about UFOs, but about the people who have alleged encounters with them.

Yes, it is a movie about an alleged UFO encounter from 1978, but the UFO is really just a MacGuffin. Pérez is the real story here, and the conflicts he has with other people are really what the film is about. Watching Pérez break down on camera is one of the film’s most powerful moments. It is jarring and painful—a close up shot of his face, lined with wrinkles that don’t seem to match his boyish bravado in the previous scenes.

“It was there, as a filmmaker, that I had to make a crucial decision for the rest of the shooting. To continue with the investigation of the UFO phenomenon, to stay only in the phenomenological aspect, or to attend to Juan, to his suffering, and to look for a way to help him,” Stivelman said.

The film is distributed by 1091 Media, formerly the Orchard, which has an established line-up of documentaries that focus on the paranormal and Ufological.

 1:50 minute trailer for “Witness of Another World” documentary (Humano Films YouTube)

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