MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — A documentary offering an inside look at the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts at Middle Tennessee State University will make its world premiere at the Nashville Film Festival in September.

“Little Hollywood, Tennessee” follows 24 high school students through three weeks in the Governor’s School filmmaking program while living and working on the MTSU campus.

The documentary will screen at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, at Regal Green Hills Theater 16 in Nashville as part of the 57th Nashville Film Festival. The screening will include a Q&A, and tickets can be purchased from the film festival website at bit.ly/4cZOdwP.

Providing well-rounded experience

Christian Whittemore, director of the documentary, knows the Governor’s School experience from several perspectives. He attended the program as a high school student in 2015, returned as a counselor in 2019 and later joined the program’s faculty.

It was while serving as a counselor that Whittemore began thinking about documenting the experience.

“I watched a group of teenagers go through the same creative breakthroughs and breakdowns I’d experienced years earlier. It felt like paging through a memory,” Whittemore said.

He returned in 2022 with a camera.

“Routinely, teenagers go through this program and come out completely changed,” he said. “They grow up and leave empowered. They live a whole life in three weeks and then have to leave it behind.”

MTSU has hosted the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts for more than 40 years, bringing talented high school artists from across the state to campus for intensive study in music, theatre, dance, visual art and filmmaking. Its focus throughout that history has been providing high-level arts education and opportunities for Tennessee’s aspiring young artists.

Watching generations blossom

Kate Goodwin, associate dean of the MTSU College of Liberal Arts, served for years as director of the Governor’s School before moving into her current role. She said the documentary captures an experience she has watched unfold among generations of students.

“I think the strength of the GSFTA experience is the pairing of eager, talented, driven young artists with expert arts faculty and providing them the time, space and resources to focus on developing their art surrounded by like-minded peers,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin has seen versions of the documentary throughout its development, including a longer cut screened during the Governor’s School’s 40th anniversary celebration. She was struck by how familiar the students’ experiences felt despite the years separating different Governor’s School classes.

“The joys, frustrations, breakdowns, self-doubt, breakthroughs, camaraderie and ultimately triumphs of self-expression are universal,” Goodwin said. “And there’s something unifying in that.”

While filmmaking provides the setting for “Little Hollywood, Tennessee,” Whittemore said the documentary is ultimately about more than making movies.

“These kids go through a whirlwind of writing, scheduling, prop-making, casting, filming and editing in three short weeks, but that’s window dressing for what really brought me back — kids fighting impostor syndrome and finding purpose in community and craft,” Whittemore said.

Goodwin said the growth captured in the film extends across the Governor’s School’s artistic disciplines.

“They learn what it means to commit to the art, what it takes to study it in college, what it takes to make it a career,” Goodwin said. “Our alums talk about the lifelong friends they made, the mentors who helped them grow and that they left having made huge strides forward in their art areas.”

Whittemore now returns to MTSU each summer to teach, and each Governor’s School class since filming began has participated in the documentary’s development in some form.

“This film is the most visceral, tangible case I could make for arts education,” Whittemore said. “Seeing it from their shoes shows the value programs like this bring to our communities.”

— Michael Davis ([email protected])