Freewater Squared Film Festival
Freewater Presentations brings blockbuster films to Duke’s campus every week, giving students a chance to experience movies together on the big screen. Meanwhile, Freewater Productions empowers Duke students to become filmmakers by providing professional equipment, hands-on opportunities, and a community of peers to create original student shorts.
Freewater Squared is the collaborative showcase of both DUU film committees, combining Presentations’ outreach and projection resources with Productions’ creative work. Together, they amplify each other’s missions—celebrating student filmmaking while engaging the wider campus community.
Brickside Music Festival
Brickside Music Festival is an annual collaboration between Duke Coffeehouse and WXDU, celebrating student-led music, art, and community at the Rubenstein Arts Center. Entirely organized by students, the festival showcases a wide range of live performances, spanning genres such as fuzzy guitar rock, experimental electronic, pastoral post-rock, and free jazz. Each year’s lineup highlights both local and touring acts, with a focus on independent and genre-defying artists.
In addition to the music, Brickside invites attendees to participate in a variety of interactive offerings, including screen printing, art-making stations, and free food trucks, creating a vibrant atmosphere that merges auditory experience with visual and tactile creativity. Open to both the Duke campus and the wider Durham community, the festival serves as an enduring platform for boundary-pushing artists, a celebration of interdisciplinary collaboration, and a space where experimentation and expression are not only encouraged, but expected.
Small Town Records Audition Show
Each fall, Small Town Records hosts their beloved audition show, where students perform in the final round of auditions to be an STR signed artist. Signing to Small Town gives students access to the fully-functioning, student-run record label: complete with a recording studio, audio engineers and producers, booking and day-to-day managers, visual artists and photographers, a vibrant house band, and everything they need to be successful as an artist.
From first-years to graduate students, the annual audition show gathers friends, music-lovers, and students from all pockets of Duke in the same room to witness the talent of their fellow classmates and create an incredible memory for the year. Held in the iconic Duke Coffeehouse, the show is often students’ first introduction to the hidden gem just behind their beloved Marketplace.
