Following the success of the first two film festivals that kicked off the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party the past two years, event organizers are now accepting submissions for the third annual Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest.

During the inaugural film festival, 19 short films were screened, and last year that number grew to 27, though there were a total of nearly 50 submissions, according to Chehalis Flying Saucer Party organizer Vince Ynzunzu.

The event is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 12, at 6 p.m. inside McFiler’s Chehalis Theater, according to the film festival’s official Facebook page.

Filmmakers from throughout the Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia, are invited to submit their UFO-themed narrative short films, documentaries, animations or music videos to be shown during the film festival.

Submissions must be 20 minutes or shorter and be related to the UFO sci-fi genre, including anything involving UFOs and flying saucers, extraterrestrials, alien invasions or the Men in Black.

“You can have Bigfoot in your movie but he better be flying a spaceship,” the Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest submission website stated.

Filmmakers must be a resident of the Pacific Northwest. There are no production date limits for submissions.

Any film not originally in English must have English subtitles. Filmmakers are also asked to keep their work “family friendly” — meaning no excessive cursing or violence, no sex or nudity and no racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia.

“We ultimately just want everyone in the audience to feel welcome. Try not to exceed a PG-13 rating. Just use common sense,” the website added.

Award categories in the Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest include best film, best alien, best documentary, best animation, best music video, best first-time filmmaker and audience choice.

Custom trophies, the Orbies, and bragging rights will be given to all award category winners, along with a $300 cash prize for the audience choice winner.

The audience’s favorite will also be screened right before the classic Chehalis Flying Saucer Party feature film is screened the next day. The feature film has yet to be determined.

Deadline to submit a film is Aug. 5, and the submission fee is $30. The late submission deadline is Aug. 25, and the submission fee will be $40 then.

However, for those who submit their films before the early deadline of June 24, the fee is only $25.

Submissions can be made at https://filmfreeway.com/NWFlyingSaucerFilmFest. 

To view the film submissions and winners from the inaugural Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest, read The Chronicle’s coverage at https://tinyurl.com/bdhx2mdy. For films and winners from last year’s film festival, visit https://tinyurl.com/4pacnc36. 

For more information about the Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest, visit its Facebook page at https://tinyurl.com/2z9c9mwv. 

Kenneth Arnold

June 24, 2025, will be the 78th anniversary of Chehalis resident Kenneth Arnold’s historic 1947 UFO sighting which sparked the “Summer of the Saucers,” where hundreds of UFO sightings were reported nationwide, including the the Maury Island Incident, which had the first documented encounter with the Men in Black, and, of course, Roswell.

The Chehalis Flying Saucer Party, scheduled for Sept. 12 and 13 this year, celebrates Arnold’s sighting.

When Arnold took to the skies over Southwest Washington on June 24, 1947, he had no idea his flight would be talked about well beyond his own lifetime.

What was supposed to be a routine flight from Chehalis to Pendleton, Oregon, in his single-engine CalAir A-2 airplane turned into anything but routine, when about 20 miles west of Mount Rainier, somewhere near Mineral, he saw a bright flash in the northeast.

Initially, Arnold thought it was light reflecting off the metallic wings of another aircraft, but after more flashes appeared, he got a better look and quickly realized he wasn’t witnessing any known conventional craft.

Arnold saw nine metallic objects flying in an echelon formation stretching nearly 5 miles. From his observations, each object appeared to be circular, roughly 100 feet in diameter, with no discernable tail matching conventional aircraft. The objects would periodically perform various aerial maneuvers including flips, banks and weaves.

Though it was only an estimate, Arnold knew the distance between Mount Rainier to Mount Adams and timed the objects as they traveled between the peaks. He calculated their airspeed to be at least 1,500 mph, more than twice as fast as any aircraft of the time.

In fact, the sound barrier had yet to be broken still until later that year in October when Chuck Yeager exceeded it for the first time flying his Bell X-1 flying at 767 mph.

To this day, nobody knows what Arnold saw in the skies above Mount Rainier, which eventually came to be known as “flying saucers” after an East Oregonian article used the words “saucer-like aircraft” to describe them the day after Arnold’s sighting.

Chehalis residents began celebrating Arnold’s sighting with a “saucer drop” during the Krazy Days festival in the 1960s and 70s, but the tradition was eventually forgotten until the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party revived it in 2019.

Aside from the Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest and saucer drop event, the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party features speakers from throughout the paranormal investigative world along with special UFO-themed displays at the Lewis County Historical Museum.

For more information on the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party, visit its website at https://www.flyingsaucerparty.org/ or follow the party on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/flyingsaucerparty.