Moment of Contact- a Review

 

James Fox is an established name on the UFOwood scene and has made many classic documentaries on the subject of UFO's. I was impressed with his previous work, The Phenomenon. It included no new cases, but lots of updates on existing ones, including new archive footage from the Lonnie Zamora encounter and the first exclusive interview with Mr Greenwood, the science teacher at the Westall school on that fateful day, breaking his silence after nearly fifty-five years. Therefore I eagerly anticipated Fox' new arrival, Moment of Contact. This is about the Varginha incident of 1996 in which several aliens were seen literally wandering the streets of a Brazilian town. See here for background to the incident: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2016/01/programme-172-podcast-varginha-20.html. The film dropped like a meteor yesterday onto all the major streaming services. I was worried it might not be on the UK version of Amazon Prime, the easiest and cheapest way to watch it; but it was. Unfortunately there is no rental option so I've bought it. £9.99 is not bad value actually. Some people in other countries are complaining that it's not yet visible on their own internet. It may just be technical errors, so hopefully that will be remedied soon. See: https://geni.us/MomentOfContact.
 
The film is very different in style to The Phenomenon. It follows the director James Fox to Brazil to investigate the incident personally. The film was, of course, made during the Covid 19 lockdown; as a result the crew have to wear masks some of the time. This is disconcerting, but maybe unavoidable. Varginha today has made a tourist attraction out of its UFOlogical superstardom and why not, as I said here?: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/04/roswell-upon-avon.html. There is an alien museum and even a water tower in the city called Disco Voador, literally "flying saucer" and it looks like one. There is nothing in this documentary that is in itself revolutionary, yet it contributes a lot to what I call the "pile of Disclosure", the accumulation of evidence that when it reaches a critical mass inevitably ends the Truth Embargo. It also includes an interview with that late great hero Stanton T Friedman, one of the last he ever gave before we lost him, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2019/06/programme-325-podcast-stanton-friedman.html. Because this is rural Brazil, the dialogue is almost entirely in Portuguese, but there are good subtitles that are easy to follow. This is a much stronger case than most crash-retrievals because research into it began straight away; compared with Roswell in which it took thirty-one years. Fox and his team begin with the simplest method imaginable, standing on street corners with placards asking for comments from the Varghinian public. It turned out to be an effective method because they get an interview with the mayor who it turns out is also a "Buh-Leeva!" As with The Phenomenon, some of the questions in this existing case that have remained mysteries were settled. Where did the "minibus-submarine" UFO crash? A witness takes them to the exact location. Carlos de Sousa, who was interviewed back in 1996, is very emotional as he leads the crew to the spot. It's obviously the first time he has been back there in all those years. Another new witness talks about how there was a military cordon in the town around where the alien was seen by the three girls and captured by the two cops. The witness says the army do not normally operate inside the city which contradicts what Lieutenant Colonel Lúcio Carlos Finholdt Pereira stated as an explanation, that the trucks seen in the street were doing normal military operations. Fox and the team visit the exact spot where Liliane, Valquiria and Katia saw the brown being. At the time it was a grassy passage between houses that gave access to the wooded valley between Jardim Andere and the eastern side of Varginha. There has been a lot of building in the area since and that access is blocked; but today, for some reason, the slot where the alien was seen has never been built on. It's a patch of waste ground seventy feet across. Equally perplexing is it is behind a locked gate and the crew had to break the lock to get in. The three girls stand by their story, after all these years, as does their mother who went to the location shortly afterwards and found a footprint of the alien. There's also an interview with the sister of Marco Chereze, who ironically looks very much like another UFOlogical heroine, Brenda Butler. She has been campaigning to find truth and justice for her brother, the policeman who handled the being, since the day he died, not long afterwards. As with Fox last production, there is exclusive old footage seen for the first time. In this case it is videos of Dr John Mack and Dr Roger Leir exploring the area and talking to the witnesses. There are also other new witnesses, including a family who live nearby who wished to remain nameless. They saw a UFO shortly after the alien was captured. They got the impression it was looking for the lost beings, as if it were a rescue party. There was also an interview with a radiographer at the hospital where the aliens were taken who did an X-ray of one of them, being told of course that he was not allowed to tell anybody. I wonder if this is the "surgeon" Timothy Good spoke to. He might have lied about his position to hide his identity. The most interesting new witness was a man codenamed "Military X" who reports that he drove one of the vehicles to the Humanitas Hospital to pick up the ET. It had been seen by several people in a box being loaded aboard a lorry. He provides a photograph from the actual mission which must have been taken surreptitiously. It shows the vehicles driving along the streets of Varginha. He reports he glimpsed the being in the box at the hospital before being ushered out of the room. Apparently all the other personnel involved in that operation have vanished. They were transferred out of the garrison and have not been in contact with the soldiers left behind. Things turn rather hairy at one point because Fox' team manages to track down Chereze's supervisor on that day. He was in the car with Chereze when they went to capture the alien. His name is Eric Lopes, but he was not very amenable to being questioned. When Fox' crew approach him in his home he orders them to leave and threatens to shoot them if they don't. Why would somebody make such a fuss about a pregnant dwarf couple and a local disabled man? Moment of Contact achieves a lot. It must surely reopen this case and make it current again. I'm not sure it has the most relevant title, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that whoever is keeping the secret of the Varginha incident, "Brazil's Roswell", they are going to hate this film. The skeptics will too because all their favourite dismissals were discredited in it. As I said, there is no single deal-breaker moment in this documentary, but it all contributes to the pile and who knows where its revelations might lead?
See here for additional background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2022/08/brazil-alien-video.html.
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2020/02/ufo-disclosure-portal.html.
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2022/10/moment-of-contact-watch-party.html.