They fascinated people around the world.

Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, garnered fame and notoriety wherever they went.

Contributed photo (ENLARGE)

Josh Gibson worked four years on 'The Siamese Connection,' his film about the conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker.

More than 120 years after their deaths, Josh Gibson was just as intrigued when he heard about the conjoined twins and their transition from curiosities on exhibit to respected tobacco farmers in North Carolina.

"I started to just become fascinated with the story and decided to make a film about them," said Gibson of Durham.

Gibson will answer questions about the four-year project that went into making his film, "The Siamese Connection," at a free screening at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Arts Education Building at the Imperial Centre, said Catherine Coulter, arts program coordinator for the Rocky Mount Arts Center. The 76-minute film is playing on a loop in the N.C. Fellowship Recipients Exhibition at the Imperial Centre, which runs until Sept. 21.

"That is an opportunity we don't get very often in our area, to have that one-on-one with someone who has worked so closely to a film and to understand their role in the event, ... especially in something like this where it is documentary, where you are working with a surviving family," Coulter said.

The film was shot during vacations and short trips using several different film formats, Gibson said. He traveled to Thailand, India and several cities in North Carolina and the United States to film plays about the twins, documents on their lives, places they had been and lived and surviving family members.

The film is not a definitive history, which would be hard to do with men who, even in their later years, were entertainers who worked hard on their images, Gibson said.

"Even at the time they were living in North Carolina, they had become so mythologized. They had become almost larger than life. I think they had kind of encouraged this and they encouraged a lot of folk tales and myths that went along with their existence," Gibson said.