Save the Date to see SUU on Silver Screen

Published: April 03, 2015 | Read Time: 1 minutes

Imagine the only school within 200 miles were about to be closed forever unless the community’s poor miners and farmers of a somewhat barren region could fund and construct a college-sized school house in just a few months time—with no modern conveniences, in the dead of winter. Though prospects may seem bleak, such is the stuff of a great comeback story.

And such is the stuff of Southern Utah University’s founding, a story which will finally be told in grandeur befitting the monumental task its founders faced when SUU’S Dr. Jon Smith premieres his latest film, “Back Up the Mountain.”

Smith’s short documentary pays tribute to the men and women in the 1898 company who forged up the mountain in a blizzard toward present-day Brian Head, seeking lumber to build the first higher education institution in southern Utah. A school in need championed by a committed community, and together they accomplished the unexpected.

Much like its storied founding, Southern Utah University and Cedar City have done it again, and the entire city is invited to celebrate in the University’s latest accomplishment when SUU and Smith premiere “Back Up the Mountain” in the Centrum Arena on April 23, 2015—117 years after SUU’s Old Main was constructed.

The production leveraged the time and talents of many individuals and families across southern Utah, as well as the University’s faculty staff, students and alumni. Among a cast of faces familiar to southern Utahans: Jasen Wade, a theatre and broadcast grad from SUU who has most recently starred in the highly successful “17 Miracles” and “Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed.”

The University hopes the red carpet premiere will bring community members from across southern Utah together in celebration of the region’s tenacity and vision, traits that have put the area on the map for students, tourists and families from across the U.S.

The “Back Up the Mountain” premiere is free and open to the entire southern Utah community.

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