When I was researching my fan film book, Homemade Hollywood, I came across brief, fleeting mentions of a fan film called Jr. Star Trek and it drove me crazy. This wasn’t just any fan flick—it was something really special.
See, this fan film was made by a 10-year-old kid in 1969, when the original series was still on NBC, long before Star Trek conventions, before the emergence of Trekkies and Trekkers, and of course, well before fan film culture came into its own.
It was probably the very first Star Trek fan film. And I couldn’t find it anywhere!
It wasn’t on YouTube or any of the other video sites, and there was virtually no information about it to be found. I put what little I could find into the book, sighed, and figured it was a mystery that would never be solved. In the end, all I had was a paragraph:
The late Ed Emshwiller, dean of the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, started out illustrating science fiction magazine covers, but began making movies in the 1950s, eventually receiving a Ford Foundation grant in 1964. Films such as his short, Relativity, a meditation about man’s place in the universe, were often shown at sci-fi conventions, and it wasn’t long before his son, Peter, started getting his own flicks screened at them as well. Working with his dad in 1969, 10-year-old Peter shot Jr. Star Trek, one of the first fan films about the famed series. The 8-minute, 16mm short eventually aired on PBS, and became a staple of Trek conventions for years to come.
Luckily, that small mention was all it took for The Nostalgic Gangsta over at Trek Nostalgia to become determined to find the fan film. Not only did he find it, but he interviewed filmmaker Peter “Stoney” Emshwiller all about it, too!
SEE JR. STAR TREK AND MORE AFTER THE JUMP! Read More
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Many fan films are incomprehensible unless you’re already familiar with the characters. Fortunately, that’s not the case with Powers, a great little short based on the comic book series of the same name by Michael Avon Oeming and Brian Michael Bendis.
This is the first in a series of articles, each one covering five “must-see” fan films. After all, there’s so many flicks out there—how do you find the good stuff? Try these! Some are classics, others are just cool, but either way, you’ll be entertained.