Marin County is a slice of the waterside, picturesque land you probably envision when imagining Northern California. It's primarily recognized beyond the region for two things: the San Quentin prison (the state’s oldest, once housing Charles Manson) and filmmaking.

George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch called Marin County home, and his company is responsible for most of the area's industry history. But on October 13, at a small theater where you could go see a standing comedy night every Tuesday this month, the local Mill Valley Film Festival is going to have its own historic moment—a Star Wars-related one at that.

Attendees at this year’s event will have the opportunity to experience 25 minutes of filmmaking that hasn’t been seen by the public in decades. In fact, even its original creator/director thought this short film had long been lost and forgotten. But after 33 years since its last public screening, almost 20 since its creator believed it to be gone forever, and nearly three since beginning its journey to screen, a short film called Black Angel is about to re-debut. The first time around, it was the short film that ran before The Empire Strikes Back. This time, Black Angel will have its own highly anticipated opening night.

A long time ago at a ranch far, far away

While it doesn’t directly involve Luke or Leia (or, luckily, Jar Jar), Black Angel is every bit the missing piece to any hardcore Star Wars collector’s stash. The short film represents the directorial debut of Roger Christian, better known as the Oscar-winning set designer for the original Star Wars (who then went on to direct Battlefield Earth and Underworld, become the art director on Alien and Life of Brian, and reunite with George Lucas for Phantom Menace). It ran before Empire in Australia and parts of Europe, specifically the UK and Scandinavia. What Luxo Jr. or Geri’s Game is to the Pixar legacy, Black Angel is to the Lucas-verse.

So it should be no surprise that Black Angel’s backstory can be traced back to Marin County and the old Skywalker Ranch in the late 1970s.

“When I made it, George Lucas was wonderful. In a way it was a thank you to me because I stood by his side on the first Star Wars,” Christian told Ars. “They hated or disliked the film that went out with the first Star Wars. George felt it wasn’t connecting with the audience. It wasn’t right. He’d been searching for a short film to make with [Empire] and it was just sheer chance.”

Luckily for Christian, he had an existing project. While in film school, he wrote “this medieval myth" that he "couldn’t afford to make.” The story centered on a knight who falls into a river while returning from the Holy Wars. He’s drowning, struggling with his helmet as it pulls him under. He eventually surfaces in this strange world, where his maiden is trapped by an evil knight (called The Black Angel). From there the quest begins—but we'll refrain from spoilers here. Let’s just say it has elements of Kurosawa and William Golding (for a hint, think Pincher Martin).

Lucasfilm partnered with 20th Century Fox on the original trilogy, so it was Sandy Lieberson, president of Fox at the time, who initially approached Christian. The filmmaker submitted his script and recalls getting a response from Lieberson within the week. “'They love it. Make it. Here’s the money. I just have to tell you George told us that no one’s to see this film, no one’s to interfere with it. The first person to see it is him.’”

No pressure, right? Unfortunately, Christian wouldn’t be operating with a Star Wars-esque budget. The filmmaker remembers a small percentage of the royalties from Star Wars went toward making the short, so his budget was about £25,000 (or slightly more than $50,000). For some perspective, the original Star Wars was created on a budget of $11,000,000 according to IMDB—220 times what was allotted to Black Angel. This would not be a luxurious production.

Christian’s 11 cast and crew members plus equipment fit entirely within two cars and a camper wagon. He relied on some old film-school buddies like composer Trevor Jones. All the filming—shot in 2.35 widescreen, cinemascope-style for optimal projection—was done using a single, old Arriflex. They went to Scotland during the fall to capture the country’s most dramatic natural lighting, shooting some scenes during the morning mist for natural image softening. If there was any benefit to such a lean setup, it was access. Black Angel was able to film in areas where larger projects would never be allowed, like the historic castle Eilean Donan. Christian had his film, filled with the visuals that would go on to become his professional trademark. It was time for final approval.

“The first screening I ever had of this film was with George in theater seven in Pinewood,” Christian recalled. “Roger Pratt was there, Gary Kurtz, Terry Gilliam got in there, Sandy Lieberson, I mean all these people… I was under the desk in fright at the back of the theater.”

As if the presence of industry luminaries wasn't anxiety-producing enough, Christian hadn’t even seen a final version yet. “At the time I didn’t know what I’d got, because Alan Strachan, who’s edited a lot of my films, he cut it for me.”

The two were also forced to employ some emergency techniques that were new to Christian because there wasn’t enough initial material for Black Angel to fill the required 25-minute runtime. “So we slowed down fight scenes in it to build up the time,” Christian said. They did this through a technique called step-printing. Strategic scenes are shot at a slower film speed so action is sped up, then frames are printed at a slower speed onto the finished film. Action becomes very fluid, with individual moments seemingly smearing together with the next.

“I’m just happy Alan showed me how to step print in those days. I loved the look; it just transformed into some mythic areas,” he said. “But literally that was because we didn’t have enough film to up the time to the 25 minutes it had to be. All this was running through my head during the first screening, but Lucas absolutely loved it. So did other people.”

Black Angel would go on to influence other Arthurian myths that followed it to the big screen, films such as Excalibur, Dragonslayer, and Ridley Scott’s Legend. Twenty years later, Peter Briggs, writer of the original Hellboy, would tell Christian that he still couldn’t get the film out of his head. Fanboy message boards had new odes written to it even this year.

And how much did Lucas love it? Remember that lightsaber battle in Empire? Picture how some of the Vader-Luke combat seems to glide in real-time. Guess where the idea to use step-printing came from?