JSU’s Longleaf Studios brings Alabama trail documentary to Birmingham premiere

Jacksonville State University’s Longleaf Studios is sending Blaze: The Trails of Alabama from the classroom into one of Birmingham’s most recognizable industrial landmarks, with a free public premiere set for Thursday, April 23 at 5 p.m. at Sloss Furnaces. The event pairs a reception with free pizza and beer with remarks from the producers and a chance for attendees to share their own trail stories, making the screening feel built for the community rather than the campus.

That public-facing approach fits the film’s subject. Blaze follows Alabama’s trail systems from the Gulf Coast to the Appalachian foothills, tracing a landscape that APT says celebrates the “incredible variety and quality” of the state’s trails from coast to mountains. The documentary was created through Longleaf Studios, the university’s experiential learning entity housed in Jax State’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences, where students learn filmmaking through active learning opportunities and work-based learning with external film professionals.

For Alabama’s independent film community, the premiere is as much about production pipeline as it is about subject matter. Longleaf Studios is showing what it looks like when student work is built with professional collaboration and then positioned for a statewide audience. Alabama Public Television will air the documentary the same evening at 8 p.m., and it will also stream on the free PBS app, available on Roku, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Android TV, and iOS and Android devices. That kind of reach gives a locally made nonfiction project a path from campus to broadcast without losing its Alabama center of gravity.

The timing also lands inside the state’s 2025-2026 Year of Alabama Trails campaign, launched by the Alabama Tourism Department to spotlight trails’ role in tourism, conservation, quality of life and economic development. The Alabama Trails Foundation says trails can serve as recreation resources and economic engines, and the numbers help explain why that framing matters. Alabama’s travel and tourism industry had an estimated total economic impact of $7.9 billion in 2024, with Baldwin, Jefferson, Madison, Mobile and Montgomery among the state’s most visited counties.

Blaze arrives as trail development continues to generate fresh stories statewide. The Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail spans 29 miles across Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Gulf State Park, while Oak Mountain State Park added more than ten miles of new trails and a pump track in December 2025. Set against those examples and against Sloss Furnaces itself, the premiere gives Alabama-made nonfiction film a public stage that connects place, recreation and civic identity in one night.