It has been two decades since Kerry Powell and Dave Holland founded the Lone Pine Film Festival, assisted by a multitude of volunteers, both local residents and western film fans from all over the state ( and world.) A grand celebration of the old and the new is planned for the 20th anniversary edition of this unique now world famous film event on October 9 through 11th 2009.

This year the Festival celebrates twenty years of making film history with something old and something new. Nostalgia film fans will be pleased that the Festival, through the auspices of James D’Arc, curator of the Brigham University Republic Studios Archive, will be screening all twelve chapters of what many consider the best of the Lone Pine serials Daredevils of the West, missing in its entirety since it was screened across the United States in 1943. Four chapters of the classic starring Allan Rocky Lane and Kay Aldridge have been known for years, but now all 12 chapters have been located and will be shown. All the sound is complete in ten of the chapters. The chapters will be screened on Saturday afternoon, not as they were intended to be seen on a weekly basis, but for the convenience of our fans, in a row.

Before the screening a special guest, Dr. Geoff Mayer, head of the School of Communications, Arts and Critical Enquiry at Latrobe University in Australia, will present a program on the serials of Lone Pine with special focus on the significance of Daredevils. Professor Mayer has called the Lone Pine Festival’s screening “quite a coup,” for no one but a few people last year have seen the serial in fifty years. Mayer is an authority on the films of the United States and Europe and has written extensively on Roy Ward Baker, the Guide to British Cinema and “Classical Hollywood Cinema and New Hollywood Cinema.” He is presently working on a book on crime film and American serials both due for publication in 2011.

Dr. Mayer will be speaking on the crime cinema of Lone Pine, including such film as High Sierra, I Died a Thousand Times, and Woman Trap at the annual Museum members-only dinner to be held at Statham Town hall just before the beginning of the Festival.

Finally, Dr. Mayer will be leading a locations tour during the Festival weekend on the work of Audie Murphy, assisted by local Murphy enthusiast Barbara Bahl. Mayer states he has been interested in the “dark” side of Murphy’s life, the psychic challenges he had to meet after his war experiences as the “most decorated soldier” of World War 2. Bahl, on the other hand, has become an authority on the film locations of Murphy’s three films made locally.

Planning is well underway for the event and announcements will be forthcoming. R.W. Hampton has just signed to do the traditional Friday night concerts. Some films made locally in the last twenty years as well as the first film The Round-Up and a silent Buck Jones film The Flying Horsemen made in Bishop and Lone Pine are on the schedule for the event. Rob Barron, manager of the Museum, will be serving as director of the Festival this year, assisted by Director Emeritus Chris Langley.

Additional information about the Festival will be available at the Festival number 876-9103 or at 876-9100 at the Museum. The website is lonepinefilmfestival.org and will have all information as it is announced.