Westall ’66: A Suburban UFO Mystery, directed and edited by Rosie Jones, is a compelling and unique look at events that occurred in the Melbourne suburb of Westall in 1966. Westall High School is at the center of Australia’s largest UFO sighting to date – which has been deliberately suppressed. Jones and her team are trying to find out why.
At the mention of UFOs, you might be prepared for a movie filled with tin-hat conspiracy theorists, but you might have to change your mind.
Publicly available eyewitness accounts suggest that active, observant people live with a memory that brings them ridicule and blame, but the stories they tell and the pictures they draw suggest they haven’t forgotten what happened.
Throughout the film, various techniques maintain a delicate and thoughtful balance between fact and opinion. Jones combines the rigor and somberness of statistics, records and interviews with playful sketches, poignant editing and lively narrative. This approach underscores the promise of objective, transparent cinema that presents visual diversity.
Jones’ commitment to neutrality has a similar effect on the participants and the overall tone of the film. So we hear students, workers, community members, researchers and others talk about what happened that fateful April day and the strange events that followed.
They all reported seeing something above the paddock that they had never seen before. Some saw it land; some saw it fly away. However, they were asked to remain quiet by the school board, police officers or other uniformed officers. Many of them were punished and ridiculed if they tried to talk about it, so they kept silent. Still, they remember what they saw, so the mystery remains.
In the end, Jones manages to deliver a film that captivates, inspires, or just encourages you to keep listening.
