The Pearl River Community College Invitational Short Film Expo (ISFX) will feature the second U.S. screening of Roger Christian’s Black Angel, which was shown before the opening of The Empire Strikes Back in Europe and Australia.
The Invitational Short Film Expo will be held at 6 p.m. Saturday, April 23, at the Ethel Holden Brownstone Center for the Arts on the Poplarville campus.
The expo also features family-friendly short films from award-winning filmmaker Frank Ladner, Teaghleagh Films, Southern Cinema Gulf Coast, Pearl River Community College Films and Brooks McMahon.
Expo guests will have the opportunity to meet filmmakers from South Mississippi and Southeast Louisiana during intermission and following the screenings. Christian will be unable to attend.
General admission tickets are available from the Office of Public Relations and the Alumni House for $5 each. For ticket orders by credit card, call 601-403-1183. All proceeds will benefit the PRCC film production class.
Christian, a two-time Academy Award winner, created the loveable R2D2 character, the Millennium Falcon, the popular lightsaber and the original sets and props for the original Star Wars. In 1979, he wrote a script for a short fantasy film, Black Angel, which Star Wars creator and director George Lucas commissioned.
After the international showings, the film’s negative was misplaced. Everyone, including Christian, thought the Black Angel was lost forever until a film archivist at Universal found the negative in 2012.