Interviews with Armardeep Kaleka and JD Seraphine, regarding the movie Sirius

Ok - I'm biting. It's going to take a while to watch these, however... I'm into the one with Arm Kaleka and it is a very good interview! I don't have time to do a transcript, but I might provide a few pieces... Give me a bit more time...
I'm back!

Arm Kaleka Interview with Jon Kelly on UFOPM

NOT a full transcript – this is the edited version!! This is only the first six minutes!
I may do more as I have time… This will give you a taste of it.
Unless there are “quotes” please assume I am summarizing the conversation.
- AB


Opening – AK’s bio read by Jon Kelly

JK: What got you involved with Steven Greer/ the movie Sirius?

AK: “Predominantly, we were writing a script for a little studio…it’s a narrative film on the subject of UFOs, but in a very benevolent way…and a Google search got me Dr. Greer. I emailed him and…an assistant at his office fired back and set up an appointment time. He happened to be in Los Angeles a couple weeks later…at that time, so we took a dinner meeting...I was telling him all I really wanted to do was” …give everyone at the end the web address to Dr. Greer’s site – (the fictional film that they were working on the script for – not the Sirius Documentary to be clear – AB)

“And I was like, can you give us your blessing on that because that would be awesome, and then he just started, I mean, going down the rabbit hole, fast (laughs) and uh…I just stopped him for a second and said, this would make an awesome documentary…and I just happened to have won an Emmy award just recently… and he was super excited about it, and said it was something he’d always wanted to do was a documentary on this subject

...Later we started talking and I said ‘There are a lot of docs out there, but they don’t seem to be very serious* docs…you know, professionally done documentaries. So that was our goal, was to do a documentary in the vein of the highest professional quality and get it out to the mainstream. Get it out farther than the people who know, uh, a lot about the subject and are very critical and, you know, very detrimental on everything – Very judgmental.”

*refers to the quality, not the content or intent of the other docs (and they did do a Sirius documentary! ;-)

JK: “It’s a controversial subject…There is a niche audience, the people who have been reading about and participating in these UFO studies for decades, and many people have very, uh, serious reputations in that community. I’m sure some of them might be concerned if you hadn’t consulted them with such a big budget and high profile project, but I think part of filmmaking is taking risks. I’m confident you took a number of risks in steering this project through to completion. Can you talk a little bit about that? About the roles of the filmmaker?

AK: “I mean the first risk is Dr. Steven Greer. He’s a very polarizing human being. He’s very polarizing in a number of ways. He says some extreme things that sometimes can’t be backed up by evidence, you know, and he says some things that can be backed up by evidence.

So that was one of the major risks that…was whether or not to decide to let him be part of the project, but since he is polarizing, we thought of it as a company as a simple solution; he’s a lightening rod. Let’s get him in there, let’s use him, and put him in the right position but not take him too far, because if you actually listen to his whole theory, um, there is the ability to start going down rabbit holes that are not backed by A) science and B) governmental evidence…that was one risk we had to take, we had to trust that we could work together as a team and that he understands we are not trying to take everything he says and say its real.

In fact, if you watch the film all over again, it says ‘Steven Greer says this,’ it says ‘so and so says this…’ ‘perhaps this is true…’ You know its very mitigating on those grounds, even though the critics lately have been saying ‘oh we are really, really pushing one way on an agenda’ – We are trying to leave it up to the audience, even Atacoma Humanoid, is a good example. We gave you what Garry said, Dr. Nolan said, but we…didn’t push it in either direction. There’s a lot of information there, if you actually, you know, watch it.”

----- End of first 6:07 seconds ---- it’s over an hour long, but this gives you a great taste of how interesting the interview is. I tried to break up the "wall of text" feel, so hopefully this is an easy read... - AB

Part II -

JK: “Well, I think the Atacoma Humanoid is an interesting component of the film. Someone…measured that about 45 minutes of the production were given to this topic. And it was a very interesting story. I mean the fact that Dr. Nolan, got involved and went on camera, and that you were able to ride shotgun into his exploration into this, I thought, ‘this is a very high profile university, and obviously someone with exceptional skills, world class skills and resources, you know, surely something can come of this…

I think there was a lot of expectation…about the nature of this being, of course it was used prominently in marketing the piece as well – it was perhaps a steer in a different direction, I mean for me it was unexpected, of course, because I associate Dr. Greer’s work, when I think of ET contact, its not looking at corpses, inasmuch as its live contacts, intelligent communications, CE-5, so, for me and maybe other audience members, it was…a change of course, but when I think about it from a filmmaker’s perspective, you did something new…and there was risk involved in that. Tell us more about working with the Atacoma Humanoid – what was that like for you?”

AK: “Well, I mean, first and foremost, a lot of the synergy on that, there’s a couple of things… it’s a crowd-funded film so, a number of people supported it and that’s exactly why the Atacoma Humanoid actually came to fruition – the whole storyline.

Dr. Garry Nolan found out about it through the crowdfunding. Somebody referred the website to him and then he kind of got interested. And then, Emery Smith and Dr. Jan Bravo did an exceptional amount of work to make that storyline happen.

They were the ones, along with Steve, you’ll see in the film actually, Dr. Bravo is leading most of the charge in terms of discussing things with the other doctors, cause she’s a bona-fide Emergency Room doctor, who’s been awarded many times over, left her profession to…be a part of this…type of research, which is a big risk for her. So I almost want to applaud her for that, you know, that’s a really complex thing.

So…Atacoma Humanoid, the biggest risk for us, obviously in terms of marketing, and in terms of looking through the DNA of what makes a good UFO film, there is this concept of ‘autopsies.’ People…seem to be fascinated with the idea that there could be beings on this planet that we could actually, scientifically, autopsy. Right? And so we thought about it in concept phase and there’s me and my small group here at Neverending Light and we’re putting it up on board and going, ‘why are people so fascinated about this?’ And then we start thinking about it. Obviously, its because the idea is, if they are extraterrestrial and they are like us, that means we can also become extraterrestrial. We can also travel outside this planet…

So, we started looking for things that could be scientifically analyzed. And that’s where the Atacoma Humanoid comes up, because what an amazing little find in Chile. And, even now, I’m…it still floors me that people just write it off as a fetus when we’ve already proven its not a fetus. It floors me when they write it off as something that’s not…extravagant. You know, that is the most extreme thing I’ve ever seen on this planet.

to be continued...

Part III


JK: "Well you know it is an unusual artifact, I agree, and I think that what was presented in the film demonstrates that it was not something that could be easily dismissed as a known and intelligent people were shown in the film looking at this...Someone of Dr. Nolan’s status, I would assume, would be able to make an early assessment about the practicality of pursuing such a path of investigation, before he began to sink his resources and reputation into that, so if thoughtful people were willing to spend time on it, I was willing as a viewer of the film to take that journey with them, although I will say that there was an unexpected…conclusion…[it] was not what I would have necessarily anticipated, but that touched off that people were willing to engage with that.

You know, its got 10 ribs. Apparently its not fetal. I don’t know really what the Atacoma Humanoid is. On the conservative side, I will take Dr. Nolan’s conclusions… or his conclusive remarks given in the film and in writing, I will take those at face value. But I remain open to learning more about continued work on that subject.

If what science tells us – that there could be up to a hundred million species on the planet, and we have only cataloged less than two million of them, then there’s potentially tens of millions of life-forms here that we don’t know, really, anything about in mainstream science. So, a scientific approach to the question would be, let’s remain open and let’s explore and observe with the understanding that there’s lots to come that we have no clue about what it is."

AK: "No, absolutely. And everybody keeps asking me what do you think…and there’s a lot of thoughts that can come of this and that’s the conversation starter, that’s what you’re supposed to walk out of the film to do. It’s supposed to leave you with the idea that science has hit its limit, we need to continue pushing. It’s the idea that we think we know everything – that’s what stops research.

Once we think we’ve done everything we created nuclear fission, oh nuclear bombs…No, that’s not the end of it. Energy – we’re barely scratching the surface of what we know about electro-magnetics. Every engineer you talk to, talk to them about magnetics and they’ll start going ‘you know…it’s a really difficult…uh…you know…” It’s super difficult to understand, but its one of those things we wanted to leave the viewer with. The idea that, even a geneticist at the highest end of scientific rigor says at the beginning of the film ‘I can prove this absolutely.’ By the end of the film, he goes ‘I told you I could prove it, but now I can’t – I don’t know what’s going on. I want to say more but I really can’t.’ And that should be enough of a journey for a human being.

But I think that hard core, people who have been…visited, or let’s say ‘beamed up’ or have seen things with their own eyes, absolutely its going to seem like it’s a short sale on a number of things. But that’s fine. Because our idea is we can only give you as much as the person is willing to say. That is our limit.

I’m not a propaganda filmmaker. I am only a documentarian and I’m trying my best to give you the truth of what we find. There’s so much in there right now that I don’t believe is absolutely true, but I had to put it in there because of the certain level of…nature of, you know partnership we have with Dr. Greer. So, its not the best…its not the best film it could potentially be.

to be continued...

Part IV


JK: “Ah, so this is the thing, as the filmmaker at the end of the day, you may…look back in hindsight and say, ‘there could’ve been some things I would’ve chosen to do differently, but in the course of our undertakings with times and budgets and all these questions…the issues that you had to deal with on a day to day basis, the film made it to completion, which I think is remarkable on its own.”

AK: “As a director, the biggest problem we have is dealing with egos. Ah, lets say Talent, when I’m working with somebody who is like a celebrity, your gonna have to deal with their ego, but not only that, their management, their, you know, entourage, different producers have different egos, different artists – you know, artists come with a lot of baggage like that, and in no small way we had something like 36 researchers on this film, and shown in this film, and we had to deal with a lot of different things.

And that to me above and beyond is what the film should demonstrate. I think, above and beyond whether or not there’s suppression, take the suppression away, humans are so egotistical that they chop each other off at the knees so they can’t actually move forward. That is the problem. The problem is not really outside, it is inside.

For example – I’ll show you the best example – I deal with scientists all the time now, they’re calling me non-stop. When a scientist can’t do something that he promises he will, he says, ‘In 45 days I’m gonna have you a prototype – give me x amount of dollars and I’m gonna do it,’ and he can’t do it – what he’s going to say to you is equivalent to ‘the dog ate my paperwork.’ [laughter] It is absolutely the equivalent. Uh – ‘somebody just booted me out,’ – I just heard this story – ‘ my girlfriend got mad at me, booted me out, got angry I didn’t pay the rent and you know what, the landlord came in and grabbed the device and threw it in the garbage.’ Really. That’s what happened [sarcasm]. That’s interesting.

So the problem is, because people don’t want to admit to failure, because people don’t want to admit that there are challenges that far supercede our human intellect, they start relying on ego. And they start relying on making fantastic stories that don’t make sense."

JK: "Well, its been my observation, that brilliant people are also eccentric and so, there are special, you know, characteristics..uh…if you want to receive the gift of their brilliance, there may be other trade offs that are… [AK makes a thumbs down gesture] that go with that [JK laughs]."

AK: "I think that…because you know, I like what you’re saying, all humans are brilliant in different ways. Certain ones that succeed in our current system of capitalism, are brilliant in very maniacal, Machiavellian, aggressive ways. And that’s the system that we should change. Whether or not somebody’s aggressive with their marketing, or their ability to, you know, do certain things to get dollars, doesn’t make them brilliant or intelligent. It makes them really greedy. That’s what it comes down to. And greed, for some reason, is being consistently rewarded in our system right now. I can’t [shrugs] I don’t know. But I, I do agree with you.”

to be continued...

Part V - the last I'm going to post as it only got me through 18:40 on the interview - sheesh! It's a good interview.


JK: “It seems to me from our conversation so far, that part of the ethics that guide the filmmaking process as you interpreted have to do with transparency and bringing clarity to issues that the general public…you know, the conspiracy readership may be really familiar with some of the topics covered in the film, there’s a mass audience who may, really, in their 9 to 5 world not have explored [these topics], so by shedding light on issues we may need to become concerned [with] – we’re talking about ethics and morality, it seems that there is a moral compass guiding the filmmaking process.”

AK: “That’s what we’re attempting to do is keep truth as your True North and take everything in the compass and move it North. To cut out all the ancillary things that move the compass in the wrong direction and keep to True North… It is a hard situation.

Some of the best compliments I get are from the mainstream people, where they go ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know this existed. I didn’t even know that this potentially could be out there, and I’m so proud because I got to watch it and I can refer it to my husband and he won’t laugh at it. Or I can refer it to my mom, and she won’t chuckle.’ Because the film is taken in a very serious light, its not made at a very base level, and that’s what was plaguing UFO films prior to this.

I mean I can even…I love Thrive in terms of concept, but it makes people giggle consistently when I show it to a normal person, they can not swallow the pill because they’re like, ‘Why is this dude flying around in a UFO that is CG like it’s a jelly bean and a gummy bear.’ And I feel for them because I know their heart is in the right spot, but, Foster and Kimberly are awesome people, but they’re not filmmakers. You, know? They’re researchers. And that’s what you need, you need to find somebody – our job as filmmakers is – we don’t want to do your job as researchers, we want to help you conceptualize and create the right form for your content. If you’re researching energy, we don’t want to put you in a Travel Show, we want to actually put you in an interesting show that makes sense for what you’re doing.”

Through 18:40 -

peace,
AB

Originally posted by AboveBoard
Ok - I'm biting. It's going to take a while to watch these, however... I'm into the one with Arm Kaleka and it is a very good interview! I don't have time to do a transcript, but I might provide a few pieces... Give me a bit more time...
I'm back!

It's nice to know someone actually watched the videos.

As I said the interviews are quite good.

reply to post by BullwinkleKicksButt

Ha! Well, I hope I don't scare everyone with the wall of text. It was a very good interview. Thanks so much for posting it!

peace,
AB