LEWISTON – As the culmination of a Tolkien Film Festival at Bates College, leading J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Thomas Shippey will give a lecture Thursday, Oct. 25, on how film director Peter Jackson brought Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” to the big screen.

The lecture, titled “Filming the Lord of the Rings: How Peter Jackson Coped with J.R.R. Tolkien,” is open to the public, free of charge. It will begin at 7 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. A reception will follow in the lobby. For more information, contact 786-6135, or [email protected].

Also during the three-day festival, Monday, Oct. 22, to Wednesday, Oct. 24, free screenings of “Fellowship of the Ring,” “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” will be shown.

Shippey, Walter J. Ong chair of humanities at St. Louis University, received a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Cambridge University. His primary areas of focus are medieval literature, especially the earliest literature of Anglo-Saxon England, and modern fantasy and science fiction. These interests merge in his two much-reprinted and translated books on J.R.R. Tolkien: “The Road to Middle Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology” (Houghton-Mifflin, 1982) and “J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century” (Harper Collins, 2000).

Both Shippey and Tolkien attended King Edward’s School in Birmingham and played rugby for Old Edwardians. The two men taught at Oxford University. As an English professor at Leeds University, Shippey inherited Tolkien’s chair and syllabus.

President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, Shippey’s most recent publications is “The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous” (Brepols, 2005) and “Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien” (Walking Tree Press, 2007).

All three film screenings will begin at 7 p.m. in the Filene Room of Pettigrew Hall, 75 College St. “Fellowship of the Ring,” “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” will be shown, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. For more information about the screenings, call 786-8294.