A Pembrokeshire town’s connection to the Star Wars movies is the focus of today’s community festival and parade. It marks the construction of the full-size Millennium Falcon built in the town in 1979 for the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
Saturday’s festival, Pembroke Dock Celebrates, includes a Star Wars-themed procession and lightsaber demos.
It ends with the last performance of a play about the spaceship’s construction which has been touring Wales.
Lightspeed from Pembroke Dock was written by Pembrokeshire-born Star Wars fan Mark Williams.
And it starts with a schoolboy super fan discovering that the Millennium Falcon is being built in his home town.
Mr Williams, who now lives in Cardiff, told BBC Radio Wales he believed the latest run of Star Wars films has created renewed interest in the Pembroke Dock story.
“It’s just a great opportunity to put the attention on to Pembroke Dock for having done this incredible thing,” he said.
“It’s an incredible achievement in cinema history in terms of the development of those large-scale models and props, and full-size props, that were built for those films.”
The construction of the full-scale Millennium Falcon in 1979 took a team of up to 40 people three months to build in a former aircraft hangar.
It was then divided into sections and transported by lorry to Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire for filming.
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