FOR YEARS, Ricky Grigg was an enthusiastic fan of the Honolulu Surf Film Festival, regularly attending screenings and, in the last four years, joining a closing-night panel to share stories about the sport he loved. At 77 he was just as stoked about surfing as he was when he first waxed a board as a young boy.

But when this year’s festival screens "Cavalcade of Surf," a classic Bud Browne film from 1962 that featured Grigg riding huge North Shore surf, the closing-night panelists will speak with a heavy heart — and without Grigg, who died May 21.

The festival, organized by the Honolulu Museum of Art, will open Saturday and run for a month at the Doris Duke Theatre. With 52 films it’s the biggest lineup yet. But the loss of Grigg, who was scheduled to participate, prompted organizers to turn the final night into a tribute screening.

Grigg was devoted to the film festival and was a big fan of Browne’s films, said Anna Trent Moore, curator of the Bud Browne Film Archives. For the last four years the festival has closed with a Browne film chosen by Moore, a fourth-grade teacher in Central California whose father was big-wave legend Buzzy Trent.

Moore, 57, had already planned to screen "Cavalcade of Surf" before Grigg died, in part because of his role in the film: He surfs, he’s interviewed and Browne used Grigg’s image on the poster he created to advertise the film.

"Bud’s films encapsulate the surf legacy of iconic figures like Ricky Grigg, Peter Cole, Buzzy Trent and George Downing," Moore said. "Ricky attended the film festival panels because they celebrated the history of surfing, which Ricky was a part of. And he was a personal friend of Bud Browne and worked with him on filming locations."

The closing night always represents the completion of a cinematic circle by ending with a film from the man who created the surf film genre. But this year, perhaps more than any other, the circle encompasses much more.

Moore’s father, Trent, was close friends with Browne, and Moore viewed the filmmaker as a second father. Trent taught Grigg to surf when he was a boy in Santa Monica, and the two men were close.

And Peter Cole, an 83-year-old former big-wave surfer who will join the panel, knew both of them.

"Ricky was a really top-notch surfer," Cole said. "He was one of the best surfers anywhere in the late 1950s or early ’60s. He liked to try and hot-dog big waves."

Cole moved to Hawaii from California in 1958, the same year Grigg arrived. They became roommates in Manoa, with Cole teaching at Punahou and Grigg attending the University of Hawaii. Grigg ultimately became a respected oceanographer.

Surfing at Sunset was a turning point.

"Once I did that, there was no way I was going back to California," Cole said. "Both Ricky and I loved surfing Sunset. I think over the years, we put in as many hours at Sunset as anybody."

Browne’s earliest films captured the imaginations of California surfers like Cole and Grigg and sparked a migration to the islands.

"I think all that was triggered by Bud’s footage," Cole said. "It showed all these wonderful point waves that were bigger than what we were surfing."

Browne made 15 films, starting with the dawn of big-wave surfing in the 1950s.

It was a unique time in the history of the sport, said Moore, and when the surviving members of that iconic fraternity gathered at the festival, audiences were treated to priceless memories.

"They shared a very close time," Moore said. "So when they got together on this panel, you had a nucleus of friends who shared a subculture at a very special time in their life, of surfing big waves. It was an epic time of big waves."