The Delegation - Die Delegation
Title: Delegation (orig. Die Delegation) 1970
Written and directed by (http://www.rainer-erler.com)
Cast: Walter Kohut ... Will Roczinski (1927-1980)
xxxxxxxxxxStephan Orlac ... Cameramen
xxxxxxxxxxHans Häckermann ... The Speaker
Production Director: Charly Steinberger
Musical effects: Eberhard Schoener
Issue: Henry Sokal and Jacqueline Hoffmann
Written, directed and produced by Rainer Erler 120 min, 1970
Filmed at Bavaria Studios, Munich, in Canada, USA, Puerto Rico and Peru.
Produced by Bavaria Atelier GmbH, Munich, in co-production with ZDF-Mainz, ORF-Vienna-Zurich SRG, RAI-Rome-Paris ORTF




Set as a television document, tells of a German television reporter, Will Roczinsky, who was found dead in his car near Los Angeles after a car accident..

Left Will Roczinsky, right the speaker of the transmission Aktuelles Forum. .

No one knows how to explain the cause of the incident and the transmission begins to analyze everything that is found in the car, diaries, photographs and films to which he was working on the investigation: a report on the existence of UFOs.
The documents are now being offered to viewers in the form of talk shows, interviews with people who knew Roczinsky, so we see the change as a skeptic man to a person who believe more than ever in the existence of extraterrestrials, that are among us wwith a "delegation", his investigation leads him to interview a wide variety of characters, witness sightings, experts in the field (in the film appear Donald Keyhoe, at that time considered one of the most important), he meets a lady who claims to have met extraterrestrials from which it received a souvenir (a strange glass pyramid).

Left the marks left by UFOs on the ground, at right the "delegation"


Left of the alien, right the pyramid souvenirs.

The story unfolds in a crescendo of suspense until the meeting of Roczinsky with a probable alien dying in the desert of Peru, there are beautiful sequences shot over the Nazca lines, at these times little known in Europe.

Left of the alien dying (it is the same as the photo above), right the Nazca Lines plane.

At this point he receives threats (it is not clear by whom) and after a meeting with a mysterious professor named Estrellas he dies
The documentary ends with the announcer reading a U.S. Air Force press release issued the same night of the death of Roczinsky:

The military system to alert the United States has seen three unknown flying objects, above the Gulf of Mexico at very high speeds, and over the North American continent at extreme altitude, the contact occurred during the night between 11 and 12 November to 23 hours of the east coast. The USAF has seen objects as number 1679 does not identify it


This film produced in Germany in 1970, unjustly forgotten, and in Italy was broadcast by RAI on 30/12/1971 at 9pm, the idea of making the film to seem like a television documentary, allows to involve the spectators, as if to convince him that he is seeing a true story, the pathos increases until the final denouement, that in reality the audience already knows that Roczinsky died as we know from the beginning and there is repeated often, but how it happens is never clearly stated, leaving doubts about who really killed Roczinsky.
The film is to be found on DVD but only in German, is still a good science fiction film that deserves to be reprogrammed. It was filmed with a hand held camera and with only a crew of 4 people plus actor Kohut. All the other actors are authentic people or laymen from theatre groups.

Text and shots are published on kindly permission by Rainer Erler, that I thanks for his kindness.

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