Dogtown is a 1997 drama film by George Hickenlooper about life in the small Missouri town of Cuba, Missouri starring Mary Stuart Masterson, Jon Favreau, Rory Cochrane, Harold Russell, and Natasha Gregson Wagner. The film is 93-minute long and was shot entirely in Torrance, California. None of the southern California mountains are visible in the film, making the fictional Cuba visually like flat, Midwest terrain.

Phillip (Trevor Saint John), left after high school to make his fortune. He returns to his Midwest hometown of Cuba. He has a reputation of having "made it" in the southern California movie industry. Karen Black plays Phillip's mom. Natasha Gregson Wagner plays Phillip's special needs sister, Sarah Ruth. The film opens as two locals with highway vests marked "Animal Control" pick up a dog carcass on the main road. Phillip arrives in the back of a taxi. The town's theater has been boarded up for ten years. The Foster's Freeze is still open for business. Everyone including a local police officer seems to remember Phillip.

Dogtown may refer to

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating – or indoctrinating – citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer.

Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.