The Mobile Public Library’s Ben May Main Library will close out this year’s stop on the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers on Tuesday, April 29, with a screening of “Willow Garden and Other Short Films” by filmmaker Jim Haverkamp. The 6:45 p.m. screening takes place in Bernheim Hall at the Ben May Main Library, 701 Government St. in downtown Mobile, and wraps up the 2007-2008 edition of the Southern Circuit series, a touring program of the Southern Arts Federation that brings independent filmmakers and their work to venues across the South.
Admission is free, and the screening will be followed by a discussion session with Haverkamp and a reception. That combination — a film, a conversation with the person who made it, and time afterward to talk over coffee and refreshments — has become the signature format of the Southern Circuit, and it is what separates the series from an ordinary movie night at a commercial theater. Audience members do not simply watch the work; they get to ask the filmmaker why a scene was framed the way it was, how a project was financed, and what it takes to make films outside the studio system.
“Willow Garden and Other Short Films” is built around short-form work rather than a single feature. Short films occupy a peculiar place in American film culture: they are rarely booked into multiplexes, and audiences outside major festival cities seldom have the chance to see them projected on a large screen with a live audience. Programs like the Southern Circuit exist largely to close that gap, packaging several short works into a single presentable evening and sending the filmmaker along to talk about them.
The Southern Arts Federation, the Atlanta-based nonprofit that organizes the circuit, operates as a regional arts agency for the southeastern United States, working with artists, presenters, and arts organizations across the region. Its touring programs rest on a simple premise: that residents of Southern cities deserve the same access to working artists that audiences in the largest media markets take for granted, and that the most efficient way to deliver that access is to move the artists themselves from venue to venue over the course of a season.
A Touring Pipeline for Independent Film
The Southern Circuit works much like a concert tour. Each season, a group of independent filmmakers is selected, and each one is booked into a string of host venues — libraries, universities, art centers, and museums — spread across the Southeast. The filmmaker travels with the films rather than the films traveling alone, which means every screening doubles as a public conversation about the craft. For host organizations, the program offers a turnkey way to bring nationally touring artists to town without shouldering the full cost of a festival.
Mobile’s stop on the circuit is hosted by the Mobile Public Library, a system that serves readers across the city through a network of branches. The Ben May Main Library, at 701 Government St., is the system’s flagship downtown location, and its Bernheim Hall has long served as a gathering space for lectures, programs, and community meetings of the kind that do not fit comfortably on a library floor. Hosting the Southern Circuit fits a broader pattern in which public libraries have taken on the role of informal cultural centers, offering film series, author talks, and performances alongside their traditional collections.
The choice of a library as the host venue also says something about who the series is for. There is no ticket to buy and no bar to pass, which lowers the barrier for students, retirees, and families who might hesitate at a theater’s admission price. A free screening in a public building sends the message that independent film is for everyone, not just for cinephiles who already know their way around the festival circuit.
What the Series Brings to Downtown Mobile
Downtown Mobile has invested heavily in cultural programming in recent years, with museums, theaters, and galleries clustered along and around Government Street and the streets that feed into it. An event like the Haverkamp screening slots neatly into that landscape. It draws an evening crowd downtown, gives attendees a reason to visit the main library after hours, and pairs well with dinner or an evening stroll along Government Street before or after the 6:45 p.m. start time.
For filmgoers, the practical appeal of the Southern Circuit is straightforward. Seeing independent work usually means traveling — to a regional festival, to a university film series in another city, or to one of the few art-house theaters that still books non-studio releases. Mobile has no shortage of film fans, but options for seeing new independent films locally are limited. A series that delivers both the films and the filmmaker to a downtown library removes the travel requirement entirely.
The discussion session after the screening is where the format earns its keep. Hearing a filmmaker answer unscripted questions about budget constraints, editing choices, or the difficulty of getting a project seen changes how an audience watches the work itself. Many attendees arrive for the film and stay for the conversation; others come primarily for the chance to ask a working filmmaker what the job is actually like. Either way, the exchange runs in both directions, with filmmakers often saying that audience reactions on tour shape how they think about their own material.
Short films in particular benefit from this treatment. Because they run only minutes long, individual shorts rarely justify a theatrical outing on their own, and they tend to reach audiences only when bundled into programs like this one. A curated evening of shorts also lets a filmmaker show range — different tones, subjects, and techniques — in a single sitting, which is difficult to achieve with one feature-length project.
A Fixture of the Local Arts Calendar
The Southern Circuit series has become a fixture of Mobile’s arts calendar for filmgoers looking for work outside the mainstream studio pipeline, giving audiences a chance to see short and feature-length independent films alongside a conversation with the filmmaker behind them. Previous stops on this year’s tour reportedly drew strong turnout at the library, and the series is expected to return to Mobile again next year.
That consistency matters. One-off cultural events come and go, but a series that returns season after season builds a habitual audience — people who mark the dates on their calendars and plan their weeks around them. Library staff have come to rely on that core group, and the regulars, in turn, bring friends who are attending for the first time. The result is a self-sustaining audience that keeps the program viable without heavy advertising.
For Mobile residents, the series offers a rare opportunity to engage directly with working independent filmmakers without traveling to a major festival, and it has helped establish the Ben May Main Library as a modest but reliable venue for arts programming beyond the library’s traditional offerings. Libraries across the country have made similar pivots in recent decades, repositioning themselves as community living rooms where public programming happens year-round, and Mobile’s experience with the Southern Circuit fits that trend.
The close of the 2007-2008 season also serves as a natural moment to take stock of what the series has accomplished. Over the course of the season, Mobile audiences have had the chance to see a range of independent work — features and shorts, fiction and documentary — each presented with the filmmaker present to discuss it. That is a slate many cities several times Mobile’s size do not offer on a free-admission basis.
Tuesday’s program is the last chance local audiences will have this season to catch the series. Doors are at the Ben May Main Library at 701 Government St., the screening begins at 6:45 p.m. in Bernheim Hall, and admission is free with a discussion session and reception to follow. Anyone curious about independent film — or simply looking for a free evening of culture downtown — is likely to find the format welcoming, and the library’s track record with the series suggests an attentive crowd for the season finale.
Looking Toward Next Season
With the 2007-2008 tour wrapping up, attention in Mobile’s film community turns to next year, when the Southern Circuit is expected to send another round of filmmakers through the region. If the pattern of strong turnout at the library holds, the Ben May Main Library seems positioned to remain the series’ Mobile home, continuing a run that has quietly made the downtown library one of the city’s more dependable stops for independent film.
The reception that follows the discussion also plays a role in the series’ appeal. Rather than clearing the hall the moment the lights come up, the format gives attendees time to linger, meet the filmmaker one on one, and compare notes with other audience members. For Mobile’s community of film fans, artists, and aspiring filmmakers, those informal conversations are often as valuable as the screening itself, providing contacts and context that are hard to come by on the Gulf Coast.
Looking Toward Next Season
With the 2007-2008 tour wrapping up, attention in Mobile’s film community turns to next year, when the Southern Circuit is expected to send another round of filmmakers through the region. If the pattern of strong turnout at the library holds, the Ben May Main Library seems positioned to remain the series’ Mobile home, continuing a run that has quietly made the downtown library one of the city’s more dependable stops for independent film.