Last year film director Alan Stivelman released the English version of his documentary Witness of Another World (Testigo de Otro Mundo), which follows the journey of Juan Pérez, a man who experienced a close encounter of the third kind at the tender age of twelve, leaving a disturbing psychological –and psychic— aftermath which caused him to choose a life of reclusion in the Argentinian pampa.
The film (freely available on Amazon Prime) was generally received with great amounts of praise and accolades due to his human-centered approach –you can read our own review of the film here— and also because, unlike your typical UFO documentary, it eschews the predominant ETH interpretation of the UFO mystery, in favor of a “shamanistic” view of a phenomenon which has in all likelihood been among us since the dawn of time. And those cultures which in our Western arrogance we keep judging as “inferior” to our own, seem at the end of the day to have a healthier and more pragmatic way of interacting with this phenomenon than us, “modern men;” especially since our society still refuses to acknowledge the reality of UFOs despite the onslaught of revelations which began in December of 2017, when the public learn US Navy pilots have been encountering unknown aerial objects on a regular basis.
This month Alan decided to share two outtakes from Witness of Another World on his Humano Films Youtube channel. The first one is a clip with Plutarco, the Guaraní elder who helped Juan integrate his amazing experiences by understanding them through the lens of their tribal legacy. Here Plutarco expands on some of the themes explored in WoAW: Mainly, that we in the modern world have become distracted and out of touch with Nature, and that attitude can have dire consequences which we should do well in correcting —current events give this warning a rather urgent tone…
The second one is a lively discussion between Juan and Carlos –another witness to the close encounter cases which transpired in Argentina in 1978, who was also featured in Alan’s movie. This clip is the first time these two men have ever met face to face:
I had the great privilege of helping Alan with the translation and subtitling of this clip –my friend and mentor Greg Bishop also provided invaluable assistance in helping me improve the text. What I love about this video in particular, is that it is a raw and unscripted encounter between two “witnesses of the impossible,” who are enthusiastically sharing their impressions of what they experienced as best they can –and how those events which took place more than 4 decades ago ended up affecting the rest of their lives– resulting in a spontaneous and messy dialogue which is at times difficult to follow. The viewer is uncertain if what they’re describing is either the UFO they observed, or the occupants which were also involved in their particular encounters, and they also jump from one thing to the other without finishing their sentences. As Jacques Vallee said when he presented WoAW last year at the Contact in the Desert conference, this is the phenomenon; which also includes how human beings try to cope with experiences which challenge the most basic principles of our nature –including language.
Similarities between these two men’s life experiences are also worth noting, including their belief that because of their UFO close encounters they have the ability to heal very quickly from common injuries –more evidence that it would be a mistake to only center in the ‘negative’ UFO reports if we wish to understand the phenomenon in its totality, as proposed by Dr. Christopher Green in the paper he prepared for the AAWSAP contract granted to Robert Bigelow.
I for one am very grateful to Alan for deciding to share this valuable material publicly, and I’m also looking forward to his future projects –and if you listened to the interview Greg and I did with him last October, then you already know it will involve subterranean realms and (hopefully) a collaboration with Graham Hancock! Excited yet?
