New Documentary Highlights Local Explorer's Trek Across Great Wall

He was a preacher who could hold thousands spellbound...a photographer who captured images of vanishing cultures...an explorer who traveled to the ends of the earth.

And then, he was forgotten.

A century ago, William Edgar Geil (1865-1925) was the first person to travel the length of the Great Wall of China. Yet he remains unknown to modern audiences, even in his hometown. "Geil of Doylestown: Forgotten Explorer" revives his extraordinary legacy.

The 43-minute documentary will premiere on May 4 at 12:30 p.m. at the County Theater, 20 E. State St., Doylestown. The Doylestown Historical Society is sponsoring the event.

Karl Stieg, a recent graduate from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, directed “Forgotten Explorer.” Stieg, a Doylestown native who lived for four years as a child in China, shot on location in Doylestown and Beijing.

The premiere will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Stieg and Robert LaFleur, a professor of history and anthropology from Beloit College in Wisconsin. In the documentary, LaFleur, a preeminent Geil scholar who teaches an advanced seminar on the explorer at Beloit, discusses his importance.

Actor Alexis Denisof, who starred in the TV series Angel, narrates the story of Geil.

The director also interviewed William Lindesay, founder of the Beijing-based International Friends of the Great Wall who has re-photographed many of the images in Geil’s book about the Great Wall. Also featured is Piao Tiejun, a Chinese researcher who re-photographed scenes from Geil’s “Yankee on the Yangtze” in 2010 with financial support from the Society.

Judge Ed Ludwig, founder and president emeritus of the Society, said the documentary will help to restore the memory and accomplishments of Geil. The idea for the film originated from a conference Ludwig organized in 2010 to generate ways to reintroduce the life and work of Geil.

In his lifetime, Geil wrote 10 books, including four on China, and traveled throughout Asia, Africa and the South Pacific. After his death in 1925, his widow, Constance Geil, who lived in “The Barrens” estate in Doylestown Borough, packed away all of his photographs and research materials. “We have a period of 80 years from Geil’s death in which he fell into obscurity,” Ludwig said.

After his widow’s death, a local rare book collector bought the Geil collection at auction. In 2007, his heirs donated the bulk of the explorer’s papers and photographs to the Society. One of them, Marilyn Arbor, curated an exhibit on Geil at the Society in 2009.

Tickets for the documentary may be purchased through the Society’s website at www.doylestownhistorical.org. The price is $5 plus a handling fee, with all proceeds donated to the Society, a 501c3 nonprofit.