Western Heritage & Film Festival

Bob Boze Bell, Elizabeth Fowler, Stuart Rosebrook

Hello

We invite you and your films to the Western Heritage and Film Festival, Payson AZ, a celebration of the American West!

We ask that your submission uses, reflects, or springs from the classic genre, and that this is apparent in the majority of your entry. We are interested in tales that pull from authentic Western heritage -- whether Indigenous, White, Hispanic or other. We encourage submissions which consider the traditional Western from different perspectives and offer unique interpretations. Standard narratives about the Old West may be used and/or transformed, bridging the past and the present to make compelling stories. Post-modern Westerns are welcome. Your entry may be full length or short, a documentary or a commercial, web-based or animated.

Our Story

The Western Heritage and Film Festival, Payson AZ is produced by the non-profit Rim Country Artists, which works to connect community through the arts. Our festival originated in 2023 with the desire to enhance the World’s Oldest Continuous Rodeo, held in Payson every second weekend of August since 1884. Our festival packs a lot of action directly ahead of the rodeo. Last year we included a public dance, an outdoor cultural fair, and Cowboy Poetry. We had excellent partners in our event, including the Tonto Apache Tribe, Gila County, the Holbrook-Pyle Foundation, the MHA Foundation, and the Arizona Commission for the Arts. Calico Springs Studios, a local production company, is one of many other partners, as is the Territorial Troupers, a reenactment company. The past two years, we have shown a range of landmark Westerns, and hosted talks by Bob Boze Bell of True West Magazine and Stuart Rosebrook of the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott. They will continue to work with us as our festival grows. We are now excited to be adding a contest for independent film and filmmakers to our 2026 Western Heritage and Film Festival! As we progress through the years, our festival will add more elements and expand professional opportunities.