EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on November 25, 2021. As I’ll be exploring the films of Cybela Clare this week, this movie has been reposted with some added new material.

I have to thank Bradley Steele Harding for recommending that I watch this while also realizing that his suggestion that I watch this film is like something out of Japanese horror. I’m now obsessed by Cybela Clare and not only want to watch all of her movies, I want to know where she came from, where she’s going and if she wants me to mix her some drinks.

Her Instagram is a mix of images from the film and selfies, telling me not much. According to a 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer piece, she’s from the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia and paints her as an outsider artist.

But let me tell you, you don’t make this kind of movie without being a believer. And this isn’t a “so bad it’s good” laugh off — I don’t believe in that “so bad” term — but more an exploration of exactly what this movie is all about.

The other info I’ve found comes from IMDB: Cybela is fluent in six languages, an Ivy League graduate and former Drama Tutor at Harvard University. She’s also a member of the Explorers Club and has traveled the world documenting international wildlife rescues, which have been incorporated in several of her films.

Starting with a quote from Arthur Schopenhauer, who said that the phenomenal world was the product of a blind noumenal will, this movie already sets itself up to be anything like the millions of conspiracy docs that litter Tubi: “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

So alright. Let’s move past making fun, let’s not argue and let’s accept this movie. Good? Great.

Man, I have so many questions, so consider this my attempt to reach out across reality and ask Cybela to answer them:

• Why is this movie a documentary sometimes and a narrative other times?
• Why exactly are aliens coming to our planet?
• If people want to cover this up, how have you been making movies for over a decade and been able to post them to Tubi and Amazon Prime?
• Have you ever seen Tribulation 99?
• Did you pay for this movie all by yourself?
• Did this play in a theater?
• What are your filmmaking influences?
• How many birds do you have?
• Did this movie really cost $2 million?
• How do you stay so happy-go-lucky in the face of danger?
• Is Baby Rainbow still around?

If you ever listened to Coast to Coast when it mattered, you’ll recognize people like Jim Marrs (who wrote Crossfire, one of the sources for Oliver Stone’s J.F.K.), Nick Pope (who ran the UK Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk), UFO researcher Robert Salas, abductee Carrie Boyer, Richard C. Hoagland, Canadian politician Paul Hellyer, Lt. Col. USAF Donald Ware, Linda Moulton Howe, George Filer, original Roswell investigator Stanton Friedman, Clifford E. Stone and more. They all appear in this to add their thoughts as the story moves from narrative to documentary. There’s also a psychic artist named Yanni who is working with the aliens in the hope of saving the humans by revealing the secrets to Cleo which she will tell us through this film.

Yanni Posnakoff is also a real person who sees angels and is devoted to painting 10,000 of them in his lifetime. So is he real? Or is he part of the story? Are any of us real?

There’s also a flashback to when Cybela was abducted as a child and lost her bird Spooky, as well as plenty of moments where we learn the connection to her bird Baby, who is played by her bird Baby Rainbow. It also becomes a spy adventure as well as a real-life version of Footprints on the Moon with no Klaus Kinski to abuse our heroine.

I’m sure by now that you’ve heard of my theory of movies that feel like they were beamed to us from another dimension, a place where they think they’re making a movie about humans but obviously have no clue how humanity acts. This movie goes beyond those men in black-made films to somehow become an auteur absolute film that we cannot hope to understand if we’re not its creator, perhaps even more baffling than a movie like The Astrologer. This feels like it was made for no one other than the bird-loving heroine at its heart and yet she has decided to bestow this gift upon us.

I don’t want to understand this movie better. I want it to baffle me for the rest of my life.

According to the PR for this movie, “Writer / Director Cybela Clare has spent over fifteen years researching various facets of the mysterious phenomena of UFOs and alien abductions. Clare has compared these abductions of humans by a technologically advanced species, to our inhumane use and abuse of less advanced species (animals) on our own planet.”

This last part blows my mind.

“Cybela Clare is the pseudonym for a screen writer/ director, who has already received credit for a well known major motion picture. Because of the sensitive nature of the documentary portion of Bird’s Eye View (which exposes a real government cover-up), Ms. Clare wishes to keep her identity and background anonymous for her own safety and security.”

Please watch this on Tubi or Amazon Prime and help me figure it out.