UAH launches Student New Works Festival, welcoming student film and cross-campus art

UAH’s new Student New Works Festival gave student filmmakers something rare in one place: a cross-campus stage, a student-built team, and a path into Huntsville’s indie arts scene. The first-year festival, produced by UAH Theatre and Film, welcomed new work from students across the university, regardless of major, with film included alongside performance, performance art, dance, spoken word and music.

The festival ran April 16-18 at the Robert E. James Blackbox Theatre in Morton Hall, a space that already carries some institutional weight. Morton Hall opened in 1960 as the first academic building on the UAH campus and went through a $30 million renovation in 2020, when the Black Box Theatre was added. UAH says the renovated venue includes a catwalk, control room, green room and modular risers, a setup that fits the flexibility student filmmakers and live artists need when they are testing ideas in front of an audience.

What makes the festival matter for Alabama film is not just the screen time. UAH said the production and performance team was made up entirely of students, with Theatre and Film faculty serving as mentors. That turns the event into a working lab for the same skills indie crews need off campus: organizing a production, building a show around original material, and learning how to refine a project in public.

The festival also sits inside a broader Film and Media Arts pipeline at UAH. The program says students create a feature film on a year-long timeline, repeating the process biannually and moving through script writing, talent selection, set creation, production, editing and more. UAH says that structure can help students earn certification in a variety of production roles, while connecting film work to communication arts, theatre, music, studio art, animation and marketing.

That same idea shows up in Cine-Bites, UAH’s public screening series for student and independent filmmakers in the region. Dr. Joey Watson has said students and indie creators need places to network, share their work and experiences, and get feedback. The series has already screened That Time I Met My Grandpa at Morton 145, free and open to the public, with a discussion afterward, and featured UAH FMA major Katelyn Whorton speaking about her experience working for the Cannes International Film Festival.

UAH’s previous-productions page lists the festival as a 1st Annual Student New Works Festival in Season 21, and the school is already planning a Student New Works Festival 2.0 for April 2027. For North Alabama filmmakers, that makes this more than a one-off campus event. It looks like the start of a local proving ground where student directors, crews and collaborators can move from classroom practice into the region’s working film culture.