Above: clip from WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS
WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS (2024)
WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS unveils the true story of The Unarius Academy of Science, an extraterrestrial-channeling spiritual school in Southern California who in the late 1970s became a wildly prolific filmmaking collective under the direction of their outlandish spiritual leader Ruth E. Norman, AKA “Archangel Uriel.”
Director: Jodi Wille (The Source Family)
Producer: Caryn Capotosto (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Little Richard: I Am Everything)
Exec. Producers: XTR (Bryn Mooser, Kathryn Everett), Diorama Media (Matt Perniciaro), Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, Thalia Mavros (The Front), Rob Ganger, SpectreVision (Lawrence Ingle, Daniel Noah & Elijah Wood), Josh Braun (Submarine).
Critical Praise
Deadline- “EP (Elijah) Wood says, “As our first entry into the documentary space, Welcome Space Brothers has all the qualities we look for in a film: compelling characters, stunning music and visuals and incredible heart. At a time when we humans are examining our relationship to the UFO phenomenon, its hopeful message is as welcome as the Space Brothers themselves.”
Artillery - FILM: Welcome Space Brothers Review “As with (Wille’s) previous film The Source Family…she remains steadfastly non-judgemental about the unconventional spiritual utopian communitarianism that is so often dismissed as delusional hippy bullshit. Where corporate stooge David Letterman saw Uriel as one zany kook among an endless stream of “talent,” Wille accepts her as a significant historical figure—a flawed but visionary creative force for good in the world, deserving of our respect.
Nova Religio - Review “...absolutely riveting…we see a host of mid-twentieth-century Americans feeling dislocated and lost...craving a sort of creativity, acceptance, and love…Ruth Norman, with her gaudy wigs, visions of intergalactic confederations, and absolute confidence that the few dozen people she gathered around herself could produce art so powerful it would change the world, gave it to them."
“Jodi Wille’s chief gifts as a documentarian derive from her empathy. Where others might see outlandishness, Wille discovers deeply human stories of people who are, in fact, quite typical of their times and places, and who build their...movements in efforts to grapple with problems most of us would find quite relatable.”
Film Threat- “If I didn’t know Jodi Wille’s film, Welcome Space Brothers, was a documentary, I’d swear it was a WTF, insane, sci-fi tale of weirdness. The story of Ruth is fascinating….It will also be a nice flex of that healthy skepticism muscle in your mind.”
Los Angeles Magazine - Alien Friends, a Space Cadillac and Elijah Wood Take Over the Los Angeles Theatre Sunday “Welcome Space Brothers is the latest film from Jodi Wille, who made waves with her first doc on another psychedelic spiritual collective The Source Family.”
Melbourne International Film Festival - Ten Films to See at Melbourne International Film Festival If You’re Overwhelmed by Choice “If you only have room for one documentary about a group of cosmic visionaries in California who believe in using past-life therapy to contact extraterrestrials, and also set up their own state-of-the-art film studio in the 1970s this MIFF, let it be this one. Directed by Jodi Wille (The Source Family), this documentary gives a non–judgmental insight into unconventional creativity." —Kate Jinx, Director, Melbourne International Film Festival
48 Hills - “...digs into the dirt of the personality conflicts that eventually rose between them. But it primarily finds a disarming, whimsical purity of intention in the one rare quasi-religious “cult” among many that did not seem to exploit its followers for sex, money, or power-tripping purposes.…”
THE SOURCE FAMILY (2012)
The Source Family was a radical experiment in '70s utopian living. Their outlandish style, popular health food restaurant, rock band, and beautiful women made them the darlings of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip; but their outsider ideals and the unconventional behavior of their spiritual leader, Father Yod, caused controversy with local authorities. More >>
Directors: Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos
Critical Praise
Wall Street Journal - “…a strange and beautiful parable about the rise, fall and surprisingly influential afterlife of a '60s love cult.” – Steve Dollar
Boston Globe - “...Artfully executed and engrossing. More than just a footnote to a wayward period of cultural history, “The Source Family” portrays an American type, the transcendent charlatan, a latter-day Gatsby, not of material riches but of the soul.” - Peter Keough
USA Today “...managed to blow my mind.” –Whitney Matheson
New York Times - “Unearthing a decent sample of these former members, as well as a wealth of archival film and photographs, the directors elicit testimony that’s diversely sharp, spacey, nostalgic and heartbreaking.” – Jeanette Catsoulis
Time Out NY - “This magnetic pop-history memorial has everything: free sex, celebrity, psychedelic rock, polygamy and beyond.” – Michael Atkinson,
T: New York Times Style Magazine - "Such a pure expression of an archetypal 1970s psychedelic subculture that it feels like an ornate and elaborate invention.” – Jenny Nichols
Seattle Weekly - “We know how this story is supposed to end, and yet we’re wrong about that…an oddly affirmative and sympathetic portrait of the disciples, if not the guru, during an era when many were casting about for alternative forms of spirituality.” – Brian Miller
Variety “…Fascinating…”
Indiewire - The film wisely refuses to judge these individuals, or their leader, for their sins and provocations; it’s open minded enough to take their talk of spiritual liberation at face value, to place it within the context of its time, and to have a lot of fun along the way.”—Brandon Harris
“We Are Not Alone” (2016, 11 mins.)
“We Are Not Alone” is a glimpse of the epic story of Unarius and the group’s exuberant, radically benevolent leader Ruth E. Norman, aka Archangel Uriel. Uriel took her ambitious collective of students on a quest to explore the mysteries of the universe and achieve personal transformation by producing a film library of wildly imaginative psychodramas. Prized by collectors for years, they are some of the most mind-blowing examples of outsider cinema.