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Canary or crackpot?

Zielinski watches a watchman in documentary to show next week in Olympia

John Zielinski grabbed this self-portrait in the 1960s. He is the subject of a documentary next Thursday in Olympia. Photo credit: Zielinskifilm.com

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It's unlikely you've ever heard of John M. Zielinski. There's a reason for that: he may well be a kook. But if he's not, there is more going on in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy.

Zielinski was an accomplished reporter by the time he shot photos of the Kalona Amish in Iowa. Those images formed a gallery exhibit in 1967, which in turn led to publication in Life magazine, The New York Times and a series of popular hardcover books. After a 1984 contract dispute, Zielinski said a "kangaroo court" railroaded him into coughing up tens of thousands of dollars. It'd be facile, and perhaps true, to suggest that debacle informed the next three decades of his life. Zielinski established himself as one of our most driven conspiracy theorists.

He, of course, disagrees with that assessment.

"If I said ... there might be little green men," he told the Leavenworth Times in Kansas, "that is a conspiracy theory. If Wikileaks put out documents showing the government has for years been negotiating with green space aliens, am I still a conspiracy theorist?"

Documentarian Ryan Walker first met Zielinski at a public-access TV studio in Columbia, Missouri, where Zielinski's car ran out of gas. Zielinski walked into the station with, as Walker puts it, "a cruddy VHS camera that was covered in a wasp nest" and announced, "‘I have a tape stuck in here that will bring down the U.S. government. I need your help!'"

Zielinski's video manifestos allege a grand network of conspiracies, in which the CIA is in business with Satanism, child prostitution and slavery, and NAMBLA.

Meanwhile, Zielinski has an awkward relationship with his own family, and lives in a tumbledown shack with no running water. Some of his claims may be true, but it's difficult to tell because he inadvertently started a fire that burned much of his evidence ... or so he says.

Walker and co-director Chase Thompson made a documentary of their own about Zielinski, and it'll screen with Q&A sessions at the Olympia Film Society, twice. Zielinski himself has been known to appear, which is surprising given the movie's ambivalent approach to its subject. Perhaps Zielinski realizes some of his theories are so crazy, they almost beg to be believed.

ZIELINSKI, 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 25 and Tuesday, July 14, Capitol Theater, 206 5th Ave., Olympia, $6-$9, 360.754.6670.

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