In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are government agents dressed in black suits, who question, interrogate, harass, threaten, allegedly memory-wipe or sometimes even assassinate unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses to keep them silent about what they have seen. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as various branches of government allegedly tasked with protecting secrets or performing other strange activities.
A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the sort of thing done in hoaxes" by Taner Edis, professor of physics at Truman State University.
Harry Dean Stanton was an American actor. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Stanton played supporting roles in films including Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), The Straight Story (1999), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), Inland Empire (2006), Rango (2011), The Avengers (2012), and Seven Psychopaths (2012). He had rare lead roles in Paris, Texas (1984) and in Lucky (2017).
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.
Milton William "Bill" Cooper was an American conspiracy theorist, radio broadcaster, and author known for his 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, in which he warned of multiple global conspiracies, some involving extraterrestrial life. Cooper also described HIV/AIDS as a man-made disease used to target blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals, and that a cure was made before it was implemented. He has been described as a "militia theoretician". Cooper was killed in 2001 by sheriff's deputies after he shot at them during an attempted arrest.
Paul Frederic Bennewitz, Jr. was an American businessman and UFO investigator. According to multiple sources, Bennewitz was the target of a government disinformation campaign that ultimately led to his psychiatric hospitalization.
Linda Moulton Howe is an American investigative journalist and Regional Emmy award-winning documentary film maker best known for her work as a ufologist and advocate of a variety of conspiracy theories, including her investigation of cattle mutilations and conclusion that they are performed by extraterrestrials. She is also noted for her speculations that the U.S. government is working with aliens.
The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival held in London, England, in collaboration with the British Film Institute. The festival runs for two weeks every October. In 2016, the BFI estimated that around 240 feature films and 150 short films from more than 70 countries are screened at the festival each year.
Nicolas Winding Refn is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer.
Charles de Lauzirika is an American DVD and Blu-ray producer and filmmaker.
The Oath is a 2010 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras. It tells the cross-cut tale of two men, Abu Jandal and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose meeting launched them on juxtaposed paths to al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the September 11 attacks, US military tribunals and the U.S. Supreme Court. The film is the second of a trilogy, with the first being My Country, My Country (2006), documenting the lives of Iraqi citizens during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The third, Citizenfour (2014), focuses on the NSA's domestic surveillance programs. The Oath is distributed both theatrically and non-theatrically in the US by New York–based Zeitgeist Films.
The Aztec, New Mexico, UFO hoax was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some ufologists resurrected the story in books claiming the purported crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some ufologists to substantiate the crash story was dismissed by the bureau as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated".
Ademar José Gevaerd, also known simply as A. J. Gevaerd was a Brazilian ufologist. He was editor of Revista UFO, founder and director of the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research (CBPDV) and Brazilian Director for Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). He represented Brazil at the Center for UFO Studies. He appeared on the Globo Network, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. He spoke in many cities in Brazil and in other 29 countries, and conducted over 700 field investigations of UFO cases in Brazil. He was described as one of the most respected of ufologists.
Mark Pilkington is a writer, publisher, curator and musician with particular interest in the fringes of knowledge, culture and belief.
Six Million and One is a 2011 Israeli documentary film, a Fisher Features Ltd. release, written directed and produced by David Fisher. This is the third and final film in the family trilogy created by Fisher after Love Inventory (2000) and Mostar Round-Trip (2011).
Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 documentary film about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two Cape Town fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which had never achieved success in his home country of the United States, had become very popular in South Africa, although little was known about him there.
The Gardener is a documentary film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. It had its Asian premiere at Busan International Film Festival, its European premiere at Rotterdam International Film Festival, and North American premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It is the first film in decades to be made by an Iranian filmmaker in Israel. The film has been shown in more than 20 film festivals and won the Best Documentary award from Beirut International Film Festival and the special Maverick Award at the Motovun Film Festival in Croatia. The film was selected as "Critic's Pick of the Week" by New York Film Critics Circle, "Best of the Fest" at Busan Film Festival by The Hollywood Reporter, and "Top Ten Films" at Mumbai Film Festival by Times of India, and its script was added to the Library of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Alan Jones is a film critic, broadcaster, and reporter primarily focused on movies in production, especially in the horror fantasy genre. His first assignment was on Star Wars in 1977, after which he became the London correspondent for Cinefantastique magazine from 1977 to 2002 and reviewed for the British magazine Starburst from 1980 until 2008. A film critic for Film Review and Radio Times, he has made contributions to the Radio Times Guide to Films, the Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction, and Halliwell's Film Guide. He has also been a film critic for BBC News 24, Front Row on BBC Radio 4, and Sky News programme Sunrise. He has worked for Empire, Première, and Total Film. An article of his in the latter coined the term for the Splat Pack.
Mirage Men is a 2013 documentary film directed by John Lundberg, written by Mark Pilkington and co-directed by Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou. Mirage Men suggests there was conspiracy by the U.S. military to fabricate UFO folklore in order to deflect attention from classified military projects. It prominently features Richard Doty, a retired Special Agent who worked for AFOSI, the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigation.
Alien Abduction: Answers is a 2022 American documentary film written and directed by John Yost that explores the phenomenon of alien abduction. Whitley Strieber, famous author of the New York Times bestselling true story Communion, appears in the documentary. The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Midwest Weirdest film festival, where it won Best Documentary.
