DOCUTAH is an international documentary film festival in St. George and Kanab. We plan to draw films from around the world as well as right here in Utah. Student films (both high school and college/university) are accepted.

Please check back for official film selections for DOCUTAH 2010. In the meantime, we are pleased to present information about two locally produced documentary films for your enjoyment.

View trailers and other videos on our Video Player page as they become available.

Return to Little Hollywood

For more than 80 years, Hollywood filmmakers have been shooting movies in Kane County, Utah. Cecil B. DeMille featured the region’s exceptional landscape in his 1939 picture Union Pacific. The great German director Fritz Lang came to this section of Southern Utah to make Western Union. Television programs like Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, and Have Gun-Will Travel were filmed here, too. To increase awareness of Kane County’s important history, Stephen B. Armstrong made a short promotional film titled Return to Little Hollywood, which focuses on the area’s cinematic heritage, providing audiences with the opportunity to view footage of locations and sets used in past film and television productions.

The creators of Return to Little Hollywood are Stephen Armstrong (Director), Christina Schultz (Executive Producer), and Chris Onstott (Director of Photography).

Steve Armstrong, the project’s director and writer, is an Assistant Professor of English at Dixie State College. He received his Ph.D. (Creative Writing) from Florida State University in 2004. He is the author of Pictures About Extremes: The Films of John Frankenheimer (McFarland, 2008). His writing about movies has appeared in several publications, most notably Film Quarterly and Film Score Monthly.

Christina Schultz is the film’s executive producer. Currently, she serves as Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Dixie State College of Utah. She graduated with her M.A. in Communications Management from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California in 1987.

Chris Onstott is both director of photography and video editor for the Return to Little Hollywood production. He worked as a photographer at The Spectrum & Daily News in St. George from 2006 - 2009. Chris recently relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he continues his career as a photographer and documentary filmmaker.

The History of Dixie State College Football

When he returned to the Dixie State campus two years ago as an assistant professor in the Communication department, Dixie alumnus Phil Tuckett, ‘65, immediately sensed that the campus community was deeply divided over the subject of the institution’s plans for future growth.

Tuckett, just retired after a near 40-year career at NFL Films, where he served as vice president and won 33 Emmy Awards, came back to his alma mater to run the newly established Dick Nourse Center for Media Innovation (CMI). He thought long and hard about what he could do to help establish some common ground and begin the process of reuniting the entire Dixie community under the safe umbrella of the “Dixie Spirit.”

He harkened back to his first days at Dixie, when he was a two-year starter and team captain of the Rebel football team. Tuckett remembered feeling the “Dixie Spirit” and the connection and sense of ownership the community had with the College. With that in mind, he put the wheels in motion for the creation of a documentary chronicling the rich history Dixie College football.

The documentary, entitled “The History of Dixie Football,” debuted in August during the DSC Athletics Hall of Fame Weekend.

“History” features a number of interviews with former players and coaches, archival photos and game films, the hour-long documentary traces the history of Dixie’s football program, from its beginning in 1937 as a junior college, to present day as an NCAA Division II member institution.

Tuckett noted that he has taped more than 70 interviews with former players, coaches and fans for the documentary, each of whom spoke on how much the Dixie football program meant to each of them. In addition to the interviews, part one features two stage reenactments of important events from the program’s storied past.

The first reenactment portrays Dixie’s first-ever football game, which game, which was played originally down near the Virgin River in Bunkerville, Nev., in 1937. DSC Hall of Famer Charlie Pickett, who at age 92 is the oldest living former Dixie football player, was a member of that first-ever team and served as a narrator and consultant for the scene.

Tuckett and his production crew recreated the dirt field on the Old Blake Farm in Washington last July, while students from Pine View High School donned authentic 1937-style football uniforms, complete with leather helmets (just like in the 2008 movie “Leatherheads”) in staging the game. In addition, a number of community members from the St. George area came out in force to act as extras and fans at the game.

Though the film is a look back, Tuckett hopes to convey the message to Dixie’s current football players that those who have come before them are looking to them to carry on the proud history and tradition of Dixie football.