The 25th anniversary edition of “Belizaire the Cajun” will have its Lake Charles debut at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, at the Imperial Calcasieu Museum, 204 W. Sallier.

Filmmaker Glen Pitre will introduce the film. After the screening, Pitre and re-release producer Michelle Benoit, a native of Lake Charles, will host a question-answer session with the audience.

The screening is part of the Great Acadian Awakening, which features a variety of activities on Oct. 11 at the Civic Center.

Admission is free but seating is limited for the screening; your name must be on the list to enter. Reserve a seat by calling the museum at 439-3797.

“Belizaire the Cajun” is set in pre-Civil War Acadiana where a wily herb doctor must save a life, defeat murderous vigilantes, win a woman’s heart, and escape the gallows in what Variety called “one of the looniest hanging scenes ever committed to film.”

The movie was shot at Acadian Village in Lafayette, Evangeline Park in St. Martinville, south of Abbeville and other spots around Acadiana.

Writer-director Pitre, a native of Cut Off, wrote the screenplay while working as a cook on an offshore supply boat. In 1983, the script was selected from among hundreds for production assistance by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.

Two years later, after coaxing two dozen Louisiana rice growers, sugarcane farmers and oil tycoons to invest, Pitre and producer Allan Durand of St. Martinville were on the set with then-screen-heart-throbs Armand Assante and Michael Schoeffling (fresh off of “Private Benjamin” and “Sixteen Candles”).

Oscar winner Robert Duvall flew to South Louisiana to play a cameo. His wife, Gail Youngs, plays a lead role in the movie as Belizaire’s romantic interest.

“It’s fun for the people whose parents and grandparents have been talking about it for 25 years to finally see it,” Pitre says. “I hope they’ll be as proud of its Louisiana-made, Cajun story as I am.”

To find out more about the film and the remastered anniversary DVD, visit www.CoteBlanche.com.

For more information on the Great Acadian Awakening, visit www.visitlakecharles.org.