Darryl Barker

Darryl Lee Barker, was born May 31, 1957, in St. Louis, Missouri, to German/English parents. When he was old enough to ride his bike from home to the Florissant public library, he checked out books about Hollywood movie making, and the book's photos were all that mattered. He was not interested in reading. The visuals were everything. Barker began making movies with a wind-up Bell & Howell 8mm camera his father bought him, and he shot spools of Kodachrome movie film when he was 12 years old. Barker carried his passion for movie making to California in 1979, where he attended and graduated from film schools at University of California at Santa Barbara (BA'81) and University of Southern California in Los Angeles (MFA'85). After film school, Barker worked in and out of the film and television industry, and did his last gig at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Barker left Hollywood and returned to St. Louis to make his first feature film, "Beethopia", released in 2013 at the Buffalo-Niagara Film Festival in Buffalo, New York, and subsequently released on Amazon Prime in January, 2018. A life-long interest in aviation and UFO history, Barker dedicated many years of study to the UFO phenomenon and produced the documentary, "The Edge of Reality, Illinois UFO, January 5, 2000", which captured testimony of five, first-hand eye-witnesses, including four police officers. "The Edge of Reality: Illinois UFO, January 5, 2000" was released at the St. Louis Filmmaker's Showcase in 2001 and subsequently, in 2003 at Sci-Fi London. Barker appeared in cable program segments and provided his work to numerous major media production teams, including ABC News, Sci-fi Channel, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and multiple print publications, who, at the time, found the Illinois Triangle UFO police sighting case of interest. Barker admires the work of Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Berman, and Federico Fellini and would work with them in a heartbeat, should they return to Earth.