"Age of Disclosure" Filmmaker Teases Supposed Revelations Ahead of Film's Debut

Age of Disclosure, a UFO documentary by filmmaker Dan Farah, will have its premiere at SXSW this weekend, and in advance of the film's debut, Farah sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to tease the movie's supposedly mind-blowing revelations. The film features appearances by UFO luminaries like Luis Elizondo and Jay Stratton, both of whom scored book deals through Farah's intervention with publishers, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The promotional efforts to gin up interest in Age of Disclosure from a distributor are, frankly, frustrating. Farah teases revelations that apparently are both world-changing and also not important enough to reveal before the weekend, for maximum publicity and the best chance at a distribution deal--you know, as you do with proof positive of space aliens.

THR contributed to the puffery, suggesting that skeptics will be converted to UFO believers by the movie, but the trade publication offered not a shred of proof beyond hinting that the same talking heads are going to offer the same talking points they routinely share everywhere from Congress to Ancient Aliens. Worse, neither THR nor Farah bothered to define what exactly they claim the movie proves to be "real." Farah never quite explains the central claim of his movie, except that "it" or "this" is "real"--whatever "it" is. 

A lot of ambiguity exists in the slippery way "it" comes to stand for everything from the (very real) fact that pilots see things in the sky they cannot explain to the (very fanciful) speculation that such things are interdimensional space ghosts and time-travelers phasing in and out of our reality. It is fully possible, for example, to be legitimately concerned that American military pilots face airborne danger from misidentifying natural phenomena, balloons, and drones as alien spaceships while also correctly understanding that such dangers are not actually caused by space aliens.

At one point, Farah calls "it" "technology" and suggests "we are not alone in the universe," which betrays his belief that we are dealing with alien spaceships, a claim for which there is and remains no evidence. Indeed, objects "insiders" had identified as alien craft or as chunks of crashed ships invariably turn out to be balloons, industrial waste, and other earthly debris, indicating that we are dealing with a modern myth. Farah even tells THR that he could not find a single part of UFO lore that his research determined wasn't true--a laughable claim only a true believer could make.

It is, sadly, also fully possible for even high government officials to bring with them the cognitive errors and science fiction mythology that can cause even intelligent people to misinterpret ambiguous evidence or incomplete data as supernatural or extraterrestrial. We need look no further than the current Administration to understand that people in power do not, simply by virtue of their office, command a full understanding of even basic facts.

The saddest part of the interview has to be where Farah says that "multiple" senators and officials said that we need this documentary to force "the government" to take UFOs seriously. Well, senators, if you aren't "the government," then who is? You might also try producing some evidence beyond "some guy said so."

Ultimately, when THR's James Hibberd concluded that Age of Disclosure "deft" and "riveting" while Hibberd provided not even a hit that it contained anything other than talking heads spinning stories, and Farah spoke of the need for a "sober" documentary to change minds, they were both reacting not to UFOs or to evidence but to the power of film to shape perceptions through aesthetics.