The event is a coming-out party of sorts, not just for the filmmakers but for the still-nascent academy they represent.

Academy chairman Christopher Lee said it was always his intention that the program would get off to a quick start, but even he was surprised — quite pleasantly — at the quality of the work his students have produced in the academy's first year.

"I'm so thrilled that they've done such great work," said Lee, who previously served as president of production for TriStar Pictures and Columbia Pictures.

In fact, Lee said, he showed some of these films to friends in the business, and they told him the work was as good as student projects at the University of Southern California's film school.

"What I like is that you get the sense that these films were done in Hawai'i," Lee said. "The diversity of points of view really comes through."

"There is a lot of momentum right now," said student filmmaker Kevin Inouye. "There is so much talent here, all it needs is a spark."

The nine UH films that the festival selected run the gamut from romance to horror, arch satire to intimate documentary.

• Inouye's "The Tale of Haiku Jones" is a clever, at times hysterical film about a Basho-worshipping student poet with two prime aspirations: to win the love of a charming T.S. Eliot-ite and get one of his 2,000 haikus accepted by a local poetry mag.

Haiku Jones' philosophical and stylistic nemesis is his former friend Eric, who, to Jones' horror, mutates from "Sonnet Eric" to "Acrostic Eric" to, finally, "Epic Poem Eric."

"That was something I could not respect," deadpans Jones.

The film also has a bit of Charlie Kaufman-esque casting. Inouye himself plays Jones (with a thousand-yard stare); fellow filmmaker Christopher Yogi plays Inouye, and Jeremy Hsu plays Yogi.

• Yogi's sparse "Every Night Spent Alone," feels like the stuff of local student fiction — suffuse with frustration, alienation and longing — but the filmmaker has a deft eye and the patience to linger where the emotion lies. One can imagine Vincent Gallo (who made the explicit road movie "Brown Bunny," the talk of the independent film circuit) doing something similar with his first projects.

• Andrew Gregor's creepy "Gemini's Effect" is a slick, impressively rendered pastiche of Japanese obake (ghost-story) flicks set, in all places, at The Queen's Medical Center.

Here a young woman is haunted by visions of a ghostly doppleganger who appears cut and pasted from some realm where it's always midnight and raining. The twists and turns of this quick-moving piece are a bit familiar, but the overall cinematography is a winner. Really, you'll never look at The Queen's Medical Center the same way again.

• While all of the UH entries are impressive, Andrew Ma's "Game Over" might go down the easiest with conventional movie goers; it boasts perhaps the most natural actor of the bunch. That's Ma himself, who plays a conflicted heavy who's tiring of his violent life of crime.

It's a good-looking film, too, with the red of a hibiscus flower given to Ma's character by a young girl — a scales-tipping gesture — virtually ablaze against the film's bluish tones and spare urban backdrop.

• "Still," a 12-minute film by Asian studies graduate student Jay Hubert also uses a conspicuous red flower (a rose) as its central image.

Inspired by Hubert's fascination with still photography, the film revolves around a Japanese photographer (the film is narrated in Japanese with English subtitles) who flees a failed relationship in his home country only to find himself on familiar romantic ground with a hula dancer in Hawai'i.

Hubert unveils the story as a series of still shots and, frequently, still subjects examined by a moving camera.

• Seong Whang's "Dniwer" (Rewind) plays off a neat idea: A young man who is "not a superhero or anything" has the power to reverse time by holding his breath.

How exactly the character discovers this oh-so useful ability is what gives the short film its emotional depth and saves it from being simply an exercise in cool effects (although one shouldn't underestimate what an interesting thing it is to see a pick-up basketball game in reverse.)

A trio of fine documentaries rounds out the selections.

• Nelson Quan's "Humble Beginnings," a mini-documentary about former Iolani basketball standout Derrick Low, is a timely piece, providing a snapshot of the player's life as he prepares to leave behind his high school success for a wide open future at Washington State University.

In addition to game footage of Low and interviews with the player's family and coaches, Quan follows Low, "Cribs"-style, around his family's small apartment, taking note of everything from his "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" bedsheets to the stacks of plaques, trophies and awards that he has accumulated over the years.

In one scene, Low, who led Iolani to three consecutive state championships, shows off a drawer full of recruiting letters from schools like UCLA, Louisville and Gonzaga.

(Ironically, the film is being screened just days after Low suffered a broken foot during practice at Washington State. He'll likely miss six to eight weeks for recovery, putting his freshman season with the Cougars in jeopardy.)

• Chrystal Jameson's "Learning Process" follows a student teacher as he navigates his way through his first year in Hawai'i's public school system.

The film's title takes on double meaning as Jameson documents the native Floridian's extracurricular activities — from free-diving to snorkeling to surfing at Gas Chambers — which lead the subject to a deeper understanding and, he says, fuels his desire to teach.

• Kaliko Palmiera's "Steve Ma'i'i" is a fascinating look at the filmmaker's father, a seminal figure in local music and the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s.

Palmiera's light hand and clean editing allow the Ma'i'i family and friends to tell an important story about contemporary Hawai'i, following Ma'i'i's "Forrest Gump"-like adventures from a musical tour of war-torn Vietnam with Henry Kapono and Mel Mossman (as the so-called "Pakalolo Trio") to later collaborations with the Beamer Brothers, George Helm and Teresa Bright, with whom Ma'i'i collaborated on five albums over 10 years.

The filmmaker does a fine job of putting his father's life in a social and political context with well-chosen archival footage complementing the interviews and Ma'i'i's own solo performances. Hawai'i residents in particular won't want to miss the archival footage of Helm, a poignant reminder that the man was a phenomenal musician as well as a one of the most influential activists of his day.

Tonight's films were selected by the festival's judges. One other film, Hubert's "Tunnel," was also selected but will not be screened; a release for one of the songs used in the film could not be secured in time.