Beyond the Short Official Premiere

Earthling is a ten-minute animated documentary about Jack Weiner, a grown man whose entire life has been shaped by being abducted by aliens when he was young, a life story nobody believes.

In the summer of 1976, Jack Weiner, along with his twin brother Jim, and two friends went camping in Maine’s Allagash wilderness, where they were abducted by aliens. It wasn’t until ten years later, and massive changes in their personalities, changes brought on by repressed memories, that the four men explored what happened to them on that trip through hypnosis. Despite people not believing Jack about his encounter with aliens, he stands by his story.

FROM THE DIRECTORS

“Jack considers himself a representative on earth for the aliens he encountered in 1976 - and is still visited by to this day - with an urgent message for all of humanity. We’re destroying the planet, its resources, and each other. Whether you believe in his account or not, the information is an urgent warning to all of humanity. For most of Jack’s life, his story has not been believed. He’s a pariah in his community and has been ridiculed publicly for his account. Despite this treatment, he stands by his story and has never wavered. He is resolute in the face of adversity, and his life story is an important lesson in empathy, understanding, and accepting others’ perspectives.

The visual representation of the story is inspired by Jack’s artistic style and artwork, which is surreal, bizarre, and evokes the liminality of his lived experience on the precipice of earth and space, reality and fantasy, and present and future. The animation and narrative’s conceptual imagery convey themes and emotions related to the fear of the unknown, loss of control, and an important message of unity for humanity. These motifs are expertly illustrated and expressed by Earthling’s illustrator/animator Ameesha Lee, whose moody abstract style echoes precisely the renderings that Jack and his fellow abductees created after hypnosis returned their memories to them.”

-Molly Graham & Keith Lane