In 1974, American documentary producer, Robert Emenegger, was asked by the Republican Party to produce a film about UFOs, using only official, government people and files. He was promised footage of an actual ‘flying saucer’ landing that had occurred at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico back in 1964.
His film was made and given the title of UFOs: Past, Present and Future.
Unfortunately, the promised footage was never forthcoming, but Emenegger had shot the dramatized parts of the segment beforehand (air force officers answering telephones, emergency trucks driving around, that kind of thing). These would have been used as inserts into the actual landing footage. What he was forced to do instead was use paintings of the alien craft and the meeting that occurred with its occupants.
A few years later, in 1976, the documentary was re-released as UFOs: It Has Begun and again in 1979 (no doubt to cash in on the success of the Steven Spielberg smash-hit movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), with additional material added from French ufologist Jacques Vallee and sections concerned with animal mutilations.
Did the meeting at Holloman AFB actually occur, or was it a ruse, a piece of misinformation with which to taint Emenegger’s otherwise excellent documentary? Rumors abound that Emenegger actually saw the footage for himself, yet in an interview for a History Channel program, he said that he asked about the footage at Wright-Patterson AFB, but he did not elaborate on whether he was shown it or not. It was all very hazy, murky and confusing.
Nevertheless, the stories that a meeting between top US military officials and representatives from an alien race actually did take place in 1964 persist to this day.
2 comments:
Gosh, we have our heads in the sand for the most part! I guess interest wasn't high enough. Do you have any idea of the ratings numbers when this was aired?
The promised footage WAS forthcoming - a bit of it, anyway.
AT ABOUT 1:24:30
Emenegger’s Golden Globe nominated documentary, entitled UFOs:Past, Present and Future, was finally released in 1974 and wasground-breaking in extensive use of information provided by the DoD. In addition to the aforementioned photographs from NASA, it featured sit-down interviews with the former heads of Project Blue Book, and footage shot inside the Pentagon of
Colonel Coleman talking open-mindedly about the
Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. In the absence of the landing
footage, Emenegger was forced to include an animated
reconstruction of the event as described to him by the USAF,
complete with artistic renderings of the alleged aliens. The
documentary presented the incident as “one that might happen
in the future – or perhaps could have happened already.”
It should be noted, however, that the landing footage wasn’t
entirely absent – at least not according to Emenegger. During
the dramatic reconstruction of the alleged landing, the
observant viewer can catch a few frames of what appears to be
a genuine, self-luminescent Unidentified Flying Object
descending slowly in the distance against the backdrop of
Holloman’s surrounding landscape. These frames, Emenegger
claims, were taken from the original landing footage and
authorised by the USAF during the editing stage for use in his
completed documentary.
Post a Comment