UAB’s Arts Week spotlights student films at free Magic City Shorts showcase

UAB turned Arts Week into a live proving ground for student filmmakers, filling the Hill Student Center’s Alumni Theater with Magic City Shorts, a free public showcase of student film and media work. The 276-seat room, built with a 22-foot screen and rear projection, gave the program a proper theatrical setting for campus projects ready to play in front of a Birmingham audience.

The showcase was set for Thursday, April 9, 2026, from 6 to 8 p.m., and UAB kept the door open to anyone who wanted to see what student creators are making. Refreshments were provided, a small but important detail that helped make the night feel less like an internal department screening and more like a community-facing stop on the city’s film calendar.

Magic City Shorts sat inside a larger Arts Week run from March 30 through April 9, presented by the UAB College of Arts and Sciences as a spotlight on student and faculty creativity. This year’s calendar put film in the same frame as work from Art and Art History, Communication Studies, English, History, Music and Theatre, which signaled that moving-image storytelling is being treated on campus as one of UAB’s core arts disciplines, not a side activity. The listing for the event identified it as Magic City Shorts: Student Film Showcase and credited the UAB Department of History and the UAB Department of Communication Studies and Media Studies.

For the local film scene, the value was in the pipeline. The UAB Filmmakers Club says it is open to anyone with an interest in film and media, and it spends the year hosting guest speakers, workshops, film production, screenings, social gatherings, field trips and lectures. Magic City Shorts is its annual April venue for showing student films to a public audience, which makes the night an early test for directors, editors and cinematographers trying to move from classroom work into real exhibition.

That pathway was reinforced by a separate Media and Film Open House scheduled the same evening from 4 to 6 p.m. at Heritage Hall’s Media Commons. UAB has also pointed to earlier film-set training with UABtv and local UAB alumni, a reminder that the club’s work stretches beyond the theater and into practical, hands-on preparation. Taken together, the open house, the workshop culture and the showcase itself put UAB in the role of an early farm system for Birmingham filmmaking, where student projects can grow into the next round of Alabama independent work.