Fri, May 19 / 7 pm
Directed by David Cherniack
2010, Canada, 102 min
Panel to follow with UFO expert Chris Rutkowski, Director David Cherniack, and Stan Michalak.
It is the 50th anniversary of one of the one of the strangest UFO incidents in Manitoba history. On May 20, 1967 Manitoba prospector Stefan Michalak was in the woods near Falcon Lake when he encountered a disc shaped object glowing red. As he moved to touch it a blast of hot gas shot from holes in the unidentified object onto his chest, setting his shirt on fire. For two years he was examined by more than a dozen physicians in USA and Canada none of them could explain what happened.
To mark the anniversary we present a rare screening by one of the founders of the WFG, David Cherniack, whose film explores the history of the UFO phenomenon from the dawn of the modern era in the late ’40s, up to the present moment. It examines how the question of extraterrestrial visitation…taken seriously by Air Force Intelligence from the start…quickly became a problem of national security as the public’s fear and fascination created a powerful and unpredictable mythology…one that that quickly overshadowed any possible investigation of an underlying factual reality.
