It seems like every Star Wars re-release in recent years has tagged on “never-before-seen” featurettes about the films’ creations, but none of them have ever touched upon a major tangential part of the original trilogy: Black Angel, a 22-minute short film attached to The Empire Strikes Back‘s European and Australian theatrical runs in 1980.
The short film had been considered lost for over 30 years, up until a chance 2011 discovery of a negative at Universal Studios. Now that film, which was created, written, and directed by Roger Christian—the Academy Award-winning set decorator of A New Hope and art director of such classics as Alien and Life of Brian—has been fully restored and uploaded to YouTube.
The Tuesday upload was preceded by an introduction from Christian, confirming that it was made after George Lucas gave him a £25,000 grant to produce something for Empire’s theatrical run—”he read my story and commissioned it on the spot,” Christian said. As our own Nathan Matisse reported in a 2013 feature, after the negative was rediscovered, a restoration crew went to work and prepared it for public viewings at film festivals beginning that year.
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