Picture This

A Look into Student Film at Columbia.

By Liam Curedale

Illustration by Em Bennett

In September, Kallen Fenster, CC ’28, a fresh-faced Columbia sophomore walked onto campus. This past summer, he’d realized that he wanted to pursue a career in entertainment law. He loved film, and he loved law—as much as anyone can.

So, Kallen started looking around. Barnumbia has no shortage of student-run film production groups. Studio 292, Girls Who Film, The 1 Train is Delayed, CLIP, and others produce short films and sketches. But to Kallen’s surprise, he found few pre-professional film or entertainment societies. Most groups focused on production rather than networking, mentorship, or industry careers. That wasn’t always the case. 

Until 2022, Columbia had its own chapter of Delta Kappa Alpha (DKA), a national, professional cinematic society (and co-ed fraternity.) Information about Columbia’s chapter of DKA and its dissolution is scarce. Students familiar with the organization say the frat fizzled out after the pandemic. Its most passionate members graduated, and there was simply no one left to keep it going. 

To fill the gap left by DKA, Kallen decided to start his own club. In 2026, he launched CELEBS alongside Vice President Ray Wu, CC ’28. The name raises a few questions. Have all of Columbia’s countless nepo-babies gathered together? Does St. A’s finally have some competition? Sadly, or happily, no.

Instead, CELEBS aims to create a pre-professional space for students interested in the entertainment industry beyond production. With a fourteen-member E-board, the club plans to host workshops, panels, festivals, and networking events across fields from film and television to music, gaming, and entertainment law. “The goal,” Fenster says, “is to create a space where entertainment opportunities and information are easily accessible to everyone.”

The scale of Fenster’s ambition might tell you something about Columbia’s student film scene. Despite a strong film theory and criticism program, the University offers relatively few production resources to its undergraduates. As a result, much of Columbia’s film culture has developed through student-run groups.

Traditionally, different groups have filled different roles in Columbia’s student film ecosystem. Most focus primarily on production. Studio 292, for example, is structured to resemble a professional Hollywood studio with bureaucratized departments dedicated to production, distribution, and social media. It helps student filmmakers develop projects from pitching and pre-production all the way through editing and release. Spaces like Studio 292 are foundational to Columbia’s film scene.

In 2023, Shannon Alexis, CC ’27, had just graduated from an L.A. high school and moved to New York. In L.A., film and TV were all anyone cared about. At Columbia, some people hadn’t even seen Back to the Future. She was determined to change that.

Alexis came to Columbia interested in studying film production. At first, she considered restarting DKA but was advised against it by faculty. Instead, she joined other groups like The 1 Train is Delayed, Girls Who Film, and eventually Studio 292 (then Columbia University Film Productions.) By December 2025, Alexis had been elected CEO of the club. 

Alexis’s circuitous path through student film closely resembles that of many Columbians. New groups are constantly popping up with different goals and outlooks. For student filmmakers, it takes time to figure out what fits best. But what if it were all a little more organized and unified?

That was part of Fenster’s goal in starting CELEBS. He envisioned the club as a “glue” holding Columbia’s various film groups together. That’s why the E-board includes students involved in countless other campus groups, from WKCR to Double Exposure and more.

Larger projects are also in development, like a campus-wide festival showing films from all of Barnumbia’s production groups. Fenster is in contact with student groups at other universities like NYU and Pace, attempting to organize New York-wide events and workshops.

For now, however, the club still faces a major hurdle. As a brand new group, it has not yet received official recognition from the university. This limits both its ability to advertise and organize events on campus. CELEBS hopes to achieve recognition by the fall semester.

Student organizations are always changing. Every few years, club leadership is cycled entirely and a new cohort of students steps up to reshape and reconfigure. Will CELEBS go the way of DKA, or is it the beginning of a new era for Columbia’s student filmmakers? Only time will tell. 

In any case, the future of filmmaking at Columbia seems bright. In Alexis’s words, “It’s all just growing, and growing, and it’s making film more accessible to a lot more people at Columbia.” 

There will always be students passionate about film at Columbia, and there always have been. That passion isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.