Ashton Campbell ('03) is always ready to say, "Action!" -- whether as a producer and director for documentaries or as co-director of the 2026 Oak Cliff Film Festival, taking place from July 30 to Aug. 2 in Dallas.

"It's refreshing and rewarding to pull it off," Campbell says. "The film festival is an extension of all the things I learned to love about cinema while at North Texas."

As a media arts major, Campbell came to UNT wanting to be a screenwriter. One of his most significant influences at the time was the plethora of classes he took under Harry Benshoff, professor of media arts, whom Campbell describes as his teaching hero.

"He opened my eyes to a lot of filmmaking that I never would have seen," Campbell says. "There's elements of Harry's classes that I still think about at times, or movies that I know I watched in there, or directors that he introduced me to that I never really knew that much about."

Under Benshoff, Campbell took classes on everything from the basics of film to a course that focused exclusively on the works of David Cronenberg and David Lynch, just one small niche in an ocean of celluloid possibilities.

"And then I did an independent studies class with him that was just on exploitation filmmaking. It was a different school of thought for Harry's classes."

The summer before his senior year, Campbell received an internship with a production company and decided to pursue production over screenwriting. After graduating, he went on to start a production company of his own, Three Seven Media, and produced the UNT Athletics documentary series, "Beyond the Green," for which he won a Lone Star Sports Emmy. His resume also includes documentaries on the history of the Dallas Majestic Theatre and UNT Health Fort Worth's Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Campbell became involved with the historic Texas Theatre in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas during its renovation in the 2010s, and from there joined the festival team. Now the festival's co-director, he says planning the four-day screening event is very similar to what he does on set.

"You've got different areas and different people," he says. "All your departments need to be in the right place. You need to make sure you're moving forward."

In the case of Oak Cliff, Campbell spends most of his time securing funding from sponsors, working out the budget and, of course, contacting filmmakers and their crews. Despite the hustle and hassle, Campbell enjoys it because the lineup changes every year, and he rarely gets to dig in and focus on a single project as much as he does with the festival.

Some of his favorite works screened at recent festivals include Noah Sofian's Fantasy A Gets a Mattress, Brandon Daley's $Positions and Matthew Perniciaro's documentary Long Live the State. As a fellow director, Campbell knows just how difficult it can be to finish a shoot by the deadline. He knows how much time and effort is sitting just outside the frame.

Making sure other people's work can shine is just one of the many reasons he loves working the event.

"One of the things I love about the film community is the community aspect of it. Our mission with the festival is to celebrate brave and independent filmmaking," Campbell says. "You're all there celebrating the same thing."