A series that brings independent films to communities throughout the South will return to Bowling Green this fall and spring.

Lynn O’Keefe, a member of the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Foundation’s board of directors, said the six films coming to the Capitol Arts Center during the upcoming Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers are all documentaries.

“This is a year-long event,” she said. “We get six films in total, three to show in the fall, three to show in the spring.”

O’Keefe said she was one of three local representatives to travel to the Atlanta headquarters of South Arts Inc., which organizes the tour every year, to choose the films that will be screened in Bowling Green.

The films that were chosen deal with contemporary issues that O’Keefe said will mean a lot to viewers in the Bowling Green area.

“I think this is amazing for a community our size,” she said. “It’s such a conversation starter.”

The first film in the series, “Hillbilly,” which will be screened Sept. 18 at the Capitol, examines perceptions of poverty and rural identity and is co-directed by a Pikeville native.

“She came back and made this documentary about Pikeville and what it means to be a hillbilly and how that term gets misused,” she said.

The Capitol will show “Road to Race Day,” a documentary about NASCAR, on Oct. 23 and “Quiet Heroes,” about a duo of medical professionals who treated people with AIDS in 1980s Salt Lake City, on Nov. 6, according to southarts.org.

The series will continue with the Feb. 12 showing of “Blood is at the Doorstep,” which examines the death of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed black man with schizophrenia who was killed by police in Milwaukee.

“So many people have been touched by this kind of tragedy,” O’Keefe said.

The Capitol will also screen “Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury,” about a band with a promising career that was derailed by an auto accident while touring, on March 19 and “The Pushouts,” which tackles social issues like “failures of public education” and “the ongoing criminalization of youth of color,” on April 23, according to the South Arts website.

The free screenings will take place at the Capitol Arts Center at 7 p.m., O’Keefe said. Each will be followed by a question-and-answer session with people connected to the documentary, she said.

“The beauty of this film series is that someone associated with the film travels with the film,” she said.

Also at the county-owned Capitol, Warren County Fiscal Court is looking into replacing the faulty HVAC system at the historic theater.

Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon said the old and unreliable HVAC system in the Capitol needs to be replaced.

“The fact is, the Capitol Arts HVAC is very old, inefficient and increasingly unreliable, and we are trying to get our funding together to replace the old inadequate units before the air units totally fail,” he said via text message. “The Capitol Arts Center is an important part of our community, and it can only remain viable if patrons are safe and comfortable, and this requires adequate heating and cooling.”

The county is currently working to determine the cost of replacing the HVAC system.

So far, there is no set timeline for the replacement, though Buchanon said the county is pushing the project forward “as fast as possible.”