Plan ahead for Star Wars Day at MidAmericon II

MidAmeriCon II is pleased to announce that

it will be celebrating Star Wars with special guests, programming and exhibits on Friday, August 19, 2016.

MidAmeriCon II’s “Star Wars Day” will take place exactly forty years after the first MidAmeriCon hosted just the third public presentation to be made about a then-little-known upcoming movie. 

Charles Lippincott, Gary Kurtz, and
Mark Hamill in 1976.

Nine months before the May 1977 release which changed the world of cinema forever, advertising publicity supervisor Charles Lippincott presented the Worldcon members with a slide show promoting Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope. This was followed by a Q&A session where Charles was joined by actor Mark Hamill and producer Gary Kurtz.

MidAmeriCon II is delighted to announce that Charles Lippincott and Gary Kurtz will once more be attending a Kansas City Worldcon to talk about the Star Wars phenomenon, along with Alan Dean Foster, who ghost-wrote the original Star Wars novelization (and more recently, wrote the novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens).

During the afternoon of August 19, Charles, Gary, and Alan will take part in a panel and Q&A session to discuss the marketing of Star Wars. In the evening, Charles will recreate the original MidAmeriCon slide presentation and participate in a further Q&A session. There will also be an opportunity
to watch a contemporary video of the original 1976 Q&A session.

These events will provide a unique insight into the way that Star Wars was presented and talked about before it became the worldwide phenomenon we know today.

Charles Lippincott will also be re-creating the associated special exhibit which was presented in 1976 at MidAmeriCon. This will use a combination of reproductions alongside original, contemporary props and other materials associated with the film.

The Star Wars events and exhibit will be open to all MidAmeriCon II attendees, subject to room capacity. Single day memberships for Friday, August 19, are available for $70 from the MidAmeriCon II website. Full, five-day adult memberships are available for $210.

IMAGES: Many thanks to MidAmericon II for its logo and the photo of Lippincott, Kurtz, and Hamill in 1976, and to Wikimedia Commons for the image of the original movie poster by Tom Jung.