Editing Remembering Zimbabwe's great alien invasion (section)

== Exploring the frontiers ==

I knew a little more than she did, again courtesy of my relative, who had provided local assistance to the documentary-maker. After Mack was killed in a car accident in London in 2004, some of his supporters and family members had founded the John E Mack Institute, with a mission to “explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we understand human identity”.

In 2007, to further these rather grandiose aims, a young filmmaker called Randall Nickerson had signed on to do something with the Ariel School footage. “Geez, he was sooo handsome,” said Sarah, slapping her palms against her jeans.

“I could hardly concentrate when he was interviewing me. Not only that, he understood the thing on a different level, because he was an experiencer himself, who had been quite open about his encounter. I think he even appeared on Oprah!”

I had contacted Nickerson in 2008, and because he happened to be in Cape Town running former Ariel students to ground, we arranged to meet and talk about his project. He cancelled at the last minute, though, saying he didn’t feel quite ready.

From time to time I checked the Mack Institute webpage for updates, but after a few years it seemed the project had run into financial difficulties. Then, in late 2013, two hours of footage tagged with Nickerson’s name surfaced on YouTube. I can recognise the carcass of a creative albatross when I see one, and the amorphous video dump showed every sign of being just that.

As an accidental historical record, though, it is fascinating: a trove of rural school scenes from the eve of irreversible societal change; the last generation of khaki uniforms, freckled noses and colonial English accents; and Cynthia Hind, already an anachronism in a series of pre-independence floral print dresses, and wearing what was described to me as a “Bulawayo perm”.

Tacked on at the end of the video are some snippets of interviews Nickerson conducted with former students. “It really does stick with me that something happened, something was out there,” says a young man. “I think something definitely happened,” says a young woman.