The ninth annual Godzilla & Friends Film Festival will be held this weekend, May 1-2, in Henderson Learning Center, Room 112. This year’s festival theme is Godzilla Battles.

The festival is sponsored by KTWU and campus departments including International Programs and Multicultural Affairs and is free and open to the public.

Members of the campus community may take a break from finals studies to enjoy some good old-fashioned monster movies and a discussion of their cultural significance.

“The audience grows every year, which is really cool to see. It’s very a family oriented event,” said Bill Shaffer, KTWU program director.

The festival will kick off at 7 p.m. on Friday,May 1 with “Gamera Vs. Gyaos” and will continue the next morning with “Son of Godzilla” at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 2.

At 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, Bill Gudmundson, a model maker known as The Resin Chef, will give a presentation on the creation of models including a slideshow of his remarkable works. Examples of Gudmundson’s models and artwork can be found on his website: bills-kitchen.com.

Saturday afternoon will feature “Latitude Zero!” at 3:30 p.m. The festival will conclude with a surprise feature to be announced just before its showing at 7 p.m.

The event will also see author and filmmaker Ed Godziszewski introduce several of the films with PowerPoints discussing the behind-the-scenes work that went into their making.

“He’s been to the place where these movies were made and he’s even seen some of them being made,” Shaffer said.

The film fest will feature giveaways, a coloring contest and a roar contest.

“It’s just a lot of fun really,” Shaffer said, “And most everybody gets into the movies. I’m just astonished that even an old movie like ‘Son of Godzilla’ – they just really like them.”