It’s over 30 years now since the night skies of Belgium were lit up by what, at the time, seemed to be an invasion of UFOs. Bram Conjaerts of production company Diplodokus was just a boy at the time but his mum saw the invaders from far away planets – or at least she noticed the strange light effects.
All these decades later, there is still fierce debate as to whether the visitation from the UFOs happened for real or whether it was an elaborate hoax. Conjaerts’ new project, The Mysterious Case of the Belgian Triangle, a documentary series pitch in Connext, will attempt to get to the bottom of the unsolved mystery.
“I was born in 1981 and so I was eight years old when this UFO wave happened,” the director remembers. “I still remember it was really a crazy story in Belgium.”
Bram’s mother told him that she had woken up and seen this strange, gigantic triangle floating in the air. He was amazed by her story and spent the rest of the summer in a tent in the garden, hoping to catch a glimpse of extraterrestrials on their magical mystery tour of Benelux. For some reason, no aliens showed.
The sightings, which took place in 1989 just as the Berlin Wall was coming down and as the Iron Curtain was being drawn back, were more frequent in the Wallonian part of Belgium than in Flanders.
“There was a group of researchers in the French-speaking parts and they were taking these sightings very seriously. They [the sightings] were also taken very seriously by the authorities.”
These researchers were part of SOBEPS, the famous “Société belge d’étude des phénomènes spatiaux” whose hunt for UFOs was covered widely in the media.
The first glimpse of what might have been the extraterrestrial visitors was made by two police officers on the 29th November 1989 near Andenne. And then the sightings became a lot more frequent.
“Thousands of people noticed and they all described the same thing – and so there was definitely something,” says Conjaerts.
This was a time before cellphones. The archive footage of the UFOs is on the patchy side. “There were really bad pictures taken. I think there were three video films [too]…the photographic evidence was really minimal. There was no evidence at all apart from this one picture that was taken by a young man in a small village…that was the only good picture they had!”
Years later, the photographer confessed that the picture was a fake. He had used polystyrene and bicycle lights to conjure up the alien effect. Many experts had been taken in by his image. It was analysed by the military and NASA who all said it was genuine. Fighter jets were put on standby.
Yes, Conjaert’s series will use humour but it won’t ridicule its subjects. Nor will it indulge in clichés of the sci-fi doc genre – slow-mo, eerie lighting etc. “I would say it is not so much about the event. UFO documentaries are mostly about one event and they try to revisit witnesses. Our series is in three parts and it’s an evolving story with cliffhangers.”
Despite witnessing the phenomenon, Conjaert’s mother hasn’t made it into the film. There were lots of other witnesses who got closer to the UFOs than she did. The main characters in the series are the researchers “who were really in the centre of all the action.” Many of these are still around today – and they’re still on the hunt for the UFOs. Soldiers and fighter jet pilots feature, as do journalists who reported on the story. One person the team haven’t yet tracked down is Michael Kuzmek, a celebrated inventor who claimed he was responsible for the UFO sightings…but subsequently disappeared without a trace.
Conjaerts and his team have already filmed several of the interviews – and they have also already recreated the light effects caused by the UFO (but they won’t be showing any object directly). Production begins in earnest this month but there will be a trailer teaser available during the Connext pitch. VAF and VRT/Canvas are aboard and the project has received tax shelter funding too.
Conjaerts is one of the three founders (along with Maarten Bernaerts and Lennart Stuyck) of Diplodokus, one of the most adventurous production outfits in Flanders. He tends to concentrate on writing and directing. During Connext, the company will be courting sales agents and looking for platforms and streamers who might be interested in the great Belgian UFO story.
Ask the director where he stands on the UFO question himself and he gives an equivocal answer. Was it a prank, a trick of the light or a genuine appearance of something from another world?
“Hmm…I go in between those things. I am really naive. I get easily influenced by people. When I see a witness who is really credible, I think afterwards, my god, it must have been really crazy. I really believe those people. At that moment, I think there are definitely aliens…but then I meet critics who say you can explain this by that and that by this, and then I think it is all bullshit maybe!”
But what about his mum? “My mother didn’t believe it was aliens but she saw something she couldn’t explain…”
