“Unidentified Flying Objects are the biggest, most important topic on the planet Earth,” declares Jim Ledwith, Sonoma-based “UFOlogist” and curator-founder of the annual UFO Symposium. A popular film-and-conversation event, the Symposium will celebrate its sixth anniversary on April 1 and 2 as part of the upcoming Sonoma International Film Festival, running March 30 to April 3.

For his first three years at the festival, Ledwith’s blend of UFO-themed movies and panel discussions was offered as part of a fringe movie series called “The Side Bar.”

“But when I pointed out that that title sort of marginalized the subject of UFOs,” says Ledwith, “the festival agreed to call it ‘The UFO Symposium.’ We’re now the only annual UFO-themed movie symposium to take place at a mainstream film festival in America.”

Over the years, Ledwith – known to many by the nickname “UFO Jim” —has built a solid following for the symposium, through positive word-of-mouth and through his own website, UFOsrreal.com. The symposium has “beamed in” UFO aficionados from all over the country, drawn to Ledwith’s curious combination of films and special guests. This year, the UFO Symposium will feature one of its most famous guests ever.

Travis Walton, of Arizona, is best known as the subject of the 1993 film “Fire in the Sky,” a Hollywood spin on Walton’s memoir, detailing his tale of one of the most famous “alien abduction” stories in modern history. The still-debated event took place in Arizona’s remote Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, where Walton was working with a lumber crew the night of Nov. 5, 1975.

“He was abducted by beings from space,” says Ledwith. “For five days, the authorities thought he’d been murdered by his co-workers, and then he was returned. All of the co-workers who were there, who saw the spacecraft, they all took polygraph tests, and they all passed, except for one, and that one was inconclusive.”

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