"One of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time... If you’d have shown me this in 1980, I think I would be signing the dotted line before you could even ask if I wanted to join." Letterboxd reviews
Shot on a shoestring budget by San Diego's Unarius Academy of Science in the late 1970s, The Arrival is a science fiction religious epic in miniature. With a mind- and-time-bending plot, dazzling special effects and a soundtrack performed on home-made synthesisers, it's a true one-off in the history of cult cinema. If ABBA and Ed Wood had joined forces with Douglas Trumbull, it might look something like this.
That it also happens to be a recruitment film for one of the most colourful spiritual movements to emerge from America's fascination with flying saucers, makes it all the more remarkable.
As an expression of American UFO culture, it stands in luminous contrast to the darker, paranoiac, conspiratorial turn that the field would take in the 1980s, which also manifests in the current wave of interest in the phenomenon.
With the blessing of the Unarius Academy, and film maker Jodie Wille, whose documentary about Unarius, Welcome Space Brothers, is produced by Elijah Wood's Spectrevision, we're thrilled to be screening a newly remastered edition of this joyful expression of cosmic optimism.
Following the screening, SAP's Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men, will be in conversation with Tanner F. Boyle, author of the brilliant para-fortean blog – and forthcoming SAP title – Getting Spooked, as he visits the UK from his native Pittsburgh.
