CALLING E.T. | A documentary on the search for our galactic neighbours

<body>Seen from the cosmos our planet is one world; looking at earth from space you see no boundaries. How would we, inhabitants of earth, present ourselves if we were to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence? Will we manage to speak as one world? Just imagine that we were to get in touch with extraterrestrial intelligence. Now, in our lifetime! There is a small group of people who are seriously taking this unlikely scenario into account. Their daily life is spent looking for signals from extraterrestrial civilisations and wondering how we, earthlings, should present ourselves if we were to make real contact. There is a protocol for the big moment. The wish to speak as one world. But will we manage to do that? Old tensions dating from the Cold War between the West and Russia, are surfacing again in this area. Can contact with extraterrestrial beings help to solve the problems of our planet? But what are we to imagine extraterrestrial intelligence is like? Are they like us people; gregarious animals, anxious and violent? Do they see a future enemy in us? Or has E.T. evolved further and will they teach us people how to interact with one another? The film gives a penetrating insight into our human fears and longings.Calling E.T. is my first long documentary. I once read an article in the paper about this group of people. The first thing that came to mind were all the things you have to worry about when you arrive in a foreign country after a long and tiring journey. You?re struggling with your luggage, you wait endlessly at the Customs and you?re accosted by all sorts of people who want something from you. The language and the local customs may well be totally alien to you, and you have to find out how to ask simple questions such as: ?Where is the toilet?? What must it be like for people from light-years away? Somebody who meets people like us for the very first time! At the same time I thought about the difficulty of preparing for such an exotic event as an extraterrestrial encounter. There are no precedents other than our own experience of dealing with foreigners, and they are not very promising. The meetings of different cultures are characterized mainly by suspicion and fear. We already find it difficult to deal with our neighbours, certainly if they look different or have different beliefs. And here you would be dealing with the ultimate stranger. It?s from that viewpoint that I made this film. What are the obstacles they are going to meet and how will they overcome them? And what does contact with extraterrestrial beings mean to us? Director Prosper de Roos attended the Academy of fine Arts St. Joost in Breda and the Institute for Photography in The Hague. He makes independent non-fiction and fiction films for cinema, television and internet. And commissioned work for various autonomous clients. Many of his films were selected for film festivals around the world. Including; Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival France, Raindance Film Festival London, Alternativa Film festival Barcelona, Dutch Film festival Utrecht, Portobello Film festival London, Stony Brooks Film Festival New York, Bradford Film festival, Shadow Film festival Amsterdam, International Bunker Festival Italy. Characteristic elements of his films are unusual choice of subjects and approach. His film Lorenzo & Daniel received in 1998 the Dutch Academy Award. His short documentary A night with Michael won in 2002 the Golden Olive Award and was nominated for the NPS prize for the Best Short Film in 1998.</body>