UFOs: The Secret History

Provenance Is!

by Alfred Lehmberg

Commentary Regarding David Cherniack's Startling Documentary:

UFOs: The Secret History

Presuming that tediously insentient lack of an understandable if pointless terror, does the reader's mouth begin to curl into a smile if the subject of UFOs comes up in general conversation? Why?What's your provenance as regards that sneer?

Is it, on reflection, a facile familiarity with the "kinds" of person usually involved with UFOs?  You don't condescend to diddle with cognitive "bumpkins" and other mal-sapient "critters"? You are loath to trifling with "mouth-breathers" and "trailer trash"? Does any of this provoke your, decidedly, too ready smirk? 

Is it, perhaps, your own personal "wealth" of "knowledge" on the topic of UFOs?  You'd read a few books on the subject, ostensively from lettered persons effortlessly dismissing the phenomena as the "misled, led by the misleading, and inspired, in turn, by the mentally ill."  

UFOs, you lugubriously lube, are a thing contrived of ourselves, you think.  They are, you announce, a prosecuted con self-invented in a vicious circle of false flags, patent hoaxes, and lucrative frauds?  ...Got it all figured out, right?

I suspect not.  See? We, even the most educated and erudite of us—especially the most educated and erudite—may be lulled into a false sense of security regarding a mere 200 years of Cartesian Reductionism—read "Science"—not remotely out of regularly soiled diapers yet as time's crow flies! 

This is abundantly evidenced, it would seem, by proud science's abject failure to address, understand, or even acknowledge UFOs buttressed by thousands of years of history... while forgetting, altogether, another five clear categories of other compelling evidence.  I refer also to evidence of the UFO's physicality, reader, vis a vis cited instances numbering into the thousands as chronicled by Allen Hynek protégé, Ted Phillips!  ...Google them.

Working starships, proton pistols, or protein cyber-torpondos?  No. As a helpful metaphor, infants (nascent humanity, remember, barely 200 years into their flirtation with scientific reductionism as noted just above) don't often come in contact with, or remotely understand, side-arms, racecars, or EBEs... even if they do come in contact with them. 

Too, they can't reach the "pedals" of motorcars—if they knew what they were—lack the strength to pull the "hammer" back on your garden-variety gat, and would suckle the nipple right off an EBE if the good stuff came from it.  I sense, here, a pervasive similarity across scale.  Existentiality is a fractal expression.

You know bupkis, reader. Me too, I'm quick to point out, even where reflective regarding same. Still, most don't know they don't know bupkis.  Tragically, they are not even trying to know that they are, most assuredly, entirely bereft of even bupkis.  I'm not that sorry if this is a bubble buster. I know it's a tough wade. You're a better person for it, really.  A stronger person.  A braver person...  Oh, and fear not. 

Don't think I know bupkis as I've just taken pains to point out!  Still, I know I know not.  That's a chip worth something.

This brings me to the subject of Film Documentaries and, finally, one documentary in particular.

David Cherniack has produced a film documentary titled UFOs: The Secret History and we'll get to it after a short if scenic diversion from that path.   The film, to step off, is a product of such luminosity, depth, and intelligence that it caused this writer, for the first time, to question what a film documentary really is, at all.  

What's its hallmark?  Walk with me a little.  [I gesture to indicate a path of visible wonders and astonishments leavened by cautious articles provoking trepidations of justified fear. The billows loom.]  ...Can't have profit, even an intellectual one, reader, without risk. 

We very quickly discover on this path that a film documentary is a very different kind of article, altogether, from any other film or historical genre.  See, a film documentary aspires to be a cinematic "document" in the historical record.  Presuming it does not cross the line into propaganda, which I must digress to say is a bald endeavor to hijack and misuse the same devices and mechanisms of the sincere documentary to lie, manipulate, coerce, or mislead, thereby performing very contrary duty and predictably limiting that Doc's historical shelf-life! 

Film documentary, then, is positively effective at changing minds because the lion's share of the observer's sensory apparatus is involved in an effortlessly passive activity camouflaged as an "entertainment," eh? 

See?  As an "entertainment" it more effortlessly penetrates.  New ideas can be justifiably introduced.  Innovative memes are efficaciously proffered.  Open Minds are progressively changed.

At its most artistically inspiring, then, film documentary is "Cinema Verite," the French for "cinema truth."  It is a worthy aspiration allowing the inclusion the artist's construction of artifice within the work to effectively highlight what might not have been easily seen or even possible to be seen before.

In pursuit of that end, a documentary must distinguish film whose purpose is to inform, report, explain, or describe from those films whose purpose is to persuade or argue a "case."  The aforementioned "propaganda" would describe an effort crossing a "line" or going too "far." Lying, in the pursuit of a propagandistic agenda...

David Cherniack does not contrive a propaganda, by any stretch, nor does he try to "persuade" or "argue."  His demonstrable effort is that abundantly informational report describing... that which needs explanation, eh?  Is Cherniack's production not, then, every bit of the previously described "Cinema Verite"?  Shall it not then qualify as a Cinema truth?  Who or what disqualifies it?

Only the conflicted observer, reader.  Only that reader without imagination, courage, or progressive aspect.  See, Cherniack has ever demonstrated a deep and abiding respect for aggregate humanity, only, in many substantive works prosecuted over more than a few decades of dyed in the wool Cinema Verite, reader!  Google him. 

Truly, Cherniack aspires to document a historic portrait of our humanity in a manner that lasts—precisely because it is not propaganda.  That's why you better listen to him.  A historical treatment with shelf life, then, Cherniack's production has a good shot at foreseeing the future... our future.

Additionally, even if true, it is not sufficient to say that this is the best documentary film on UFOs ever made.  Others have produced films as compelling, as accurate, and as justifiably convincing.  Cherniack's effort, though, stands apart because he wasn't trying to be compelling and convincing... but was very compelling and abundantly convincing, still.  A spoonful of sincerity's sugar helps the medicine go down.

In operation, Cherniack takes ufological facts as well known as they are uncontested and demonstrates, astonishingly, a cosmic affair as unsettling as it is enigmatic—as embarrassing as it is shameful!  See, UFOs, Cherniack amply demonstrates, are not ridiculed, dismissed, and ignored by the mainstream simply because the sum total of same is exclusively "M-cubistic,"—or the inspired activities of the "misled, misleading, and mentally ill"!  It's a lot more humiliating than that... 

Allow a quick digression:  "M cubed" is an excuse beginning to seem decidedly facile, on reflection.  Especially so, given evidentiary categories including a detailed history covering thousands of years, vetted antique art and pre-digital photographs depicting same, or well scrutinized and evaluated anecdotal accounts from quality individuals unknown to one another regarding the same incident.  Forget thousands of cases, already mentioned, where UFOs have left physical traces, reader! The data are, conservatively, monumental.  Simply monumental!

No, that pesky "MUD"—mainstream ufological denial—earlier alluded to, is predicated, instead, upon the complacency, the incompetence, the convenience, and the cowardice, reader, inspired by "other" persons with an "agenda," you know? 

These are, of course, persons who tell four and five-star generals where the bear goes through the buckwheat! I don't allude to Presidents... 

"MUD" is further invented by persons enthralled with corporate entities who direct proxy Premiers and Presidents in their "big-picture" affairs.  "MUD" is additionally falsified by that which is loath to give up present positions of very lucrative power and control.

"MUD" is the same thing devaluing our dollar so it can gouge us for essentials.  "MUD" is identical to the thing poisoning our food, inventing bogus and harmful pharmaceuticals, and embroiling us in senselessly psychopathic wars.  "MUD" is that entity with the reptile brain nurtured at the heart of most corporations; it defines the awful sanity of the serial sociopath and is the perfect vehicle through which the individual can choose to sacrifice conscience, compassion, and consideration.  It's not you.  "It's the company," eh?  Here is the author of your ufological ridicule, reader. Why?

Well, UFOs, perhaps the ultimate sedition, end-run all that.  The canted cultural argle-bargle is driven away to the wailing lament of lick-spittles and fanboys.  Control barriers come down and that's fine where everyone can take care of themselves and provide for power and survival needs in some comfort. See, it's the UFOs pointing, perhaps, to just that kind of personal autonomy... ...then what teams we can make, eh?  I begin to digress.

This seems the "barn," then, to which Cherniack's horses stampede, even as he does not report that barn as the destination.  It remains; the track ahead of his charging herd seems well littered with hoof prints and road spoor, still.  Consequently, it seems abundantly clear that an accommodating "stretch" to the "barn" is not required, nor must one do more than merely step—jumping is not necessary—to that barn's conclusion.

Concluding, it remains that this is the "one" film everyone needs to see regarding UFOs.  I say this even given the inclusion of Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs.  Hell, I loved them myself when this film was made... time would wound, but who knew it at the time? 

Remains, the film is a true silver bullet for one's ufological ignorance.  The observer is only improved thereby and is additionally relieved of the remotest need to smirk and giggle... about which they know nothing.  One must walk to talk.

Be improved and choose same.  Let Cherniack's film be a first step, then, on that rewarding journey to an elevation and enlightenment we're so wrongly trained to regard with dread and trepidation. That's not all it is!  It's a future that we will make beyond the manipulations of Gods and Devils!  It's a future, looming, regardless.

Read on.