Film Birmingham Launches Calendar to Centralize Indie Screenings and Events

Independent screenings in Birmingham have often lived in fragments, tucked into social posts, venue pages, and word-of-mouth chains that make them easy to miss. Film Birmingham is trying to change that with a new Film Calendar built to highlight cinema events across Birmingham and Jefferson County, and to give audiences, venues, filmmakers, and crew a single place to look.

Film Birmingham describes the calendar as a “one stop shop” for cinephile needs, and it is meant to do more than list movies. The page folds in networking and workshop opportunities, which matters in a scene where turnout depends on people finding not just premieres and repertory titles, but the smaller events that keep the community active between festivals. For local filmmakers and exhibitors, that kind of visibility can mean fuller rooms, steadier audience habits, and more reliable momentum for campus screenings, student showcases, documentary nights, and post-screening conversations.

The calendar also fits the larger role Film Birmingham plays as an initiative of Create Birmingham and the film commission for the Greater Birmingham region. The organization says its mission includes creating job opportunities, generating revenue, elevating regional visibility, and advocating economic development. Lee Shook, who joined Create Birmingham in September 2024 as Jefferson County Film Strategist, has said Birmingham film stakeholders need to communicate better and break down silos, a goal that lines up closely with the new calendar’s purpose.

That connective work matters in a city where the infrastructure already exists, but not always the shared visibility. Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema, the two-screen independent movie theater in Birmingham’s historic theater district, regularly programs film events, and other local calendars have shown how much activity is already spread across the area. Film Birmingham’s own resource pages also point to a crew database, a locations database, production resources, and a Jefferson County Film Tourism Guide that traces the county’s cinema history back to the dawn of commercial moviemaking.

The calendar arrives as Birmingham keeps building its screen economy. In 2026, the Birmingham City Council approved a $160,000 grant to Create Birmingham to keep attracting film and TV productions. Local reporting also found that films shot in the Birmingham area had a combined budget of $58 million in 2023, with $32 million spent locally. Put together, the calendar, the crew and resource tools, and the tourism guide form a clearer map of a scene that has long needed one central place to see how much is already happening.