“Desert Dancer” opened the 30th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Tuesday at the Arlington Theatre NIK BLASKOVICH/ NEWS-PRESS
For this 30th year of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival,Tuesday is the new Thursday Moved up two days and extended by one, the 12-day festival looked the same as in years past.
The Arlington Theatre was filled with film lovers and the smell of popcorn.
The streets outside bustled with fans hoping to glimpse a celebrity while searchlights raked the skies, now clear of the storm clouds of the day before.
The stars of the opening night film had come in from places due east, whether that was New York or Europe, or even a little more inland down in Los Angeles. And the consensus was: What a lovely place to have a film festival.
The 30th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival opens tonight for 12 days of celebrities; world premiere films; popular panels on writing, producing and directing; and much more. In a show of its expanding success, the festival now starts two days earlier and ends nearly a week later on a Saturday, a change after many years.
SBIFF as usual has a bevy of Oscar contenders ready to be honored and walk the red carpet, events that cause Santa Barbarans to flood the street outside the Arlington Theatre for a chance to see Hollywood’s best. Honored this year are Steve Carell, Jennifer Aniston, Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, the Cousteau family, Michael Keaton and a selection of breakthrough actors in the festival’s Virtuosos Award evening.
The 20 finalists for this year’s 10-10-10 competition gather for a group shot at the Canary Hotel. Ten are from area high schools, and 10 are from colleges such as SBCC, UCSB, Allan Hancock and Brooks Institute. The 10 teams of screenwriters and directors have the length of the festival to shoot and complete a short film, with prizes for the winning four films.
Starting positions, everyone! The 12th annual 10-10-10 Student Competition kicked off yesterday at a press conference at the Canary Hotel, a day before the 12-day Santa Barbara International Film Festival begins. High school and college students get the span of the festival to shoot and edit a film to be screened on the final day of the film fest, with cash prizes and summer workshop scholarships going to the winners.
This year the competition has brought on a new sponsor, Relativity Education, part of Relativity Media, which is also hosting tonight’s opening film, “Desert Dancer.” According to programmer Mickey Duzdevich, the media company runs a summer workshop for film students and was seeking to partner with a film festival nationwide that ran a similar competition. The sponsorship may continue through the following years with the possibility of equipment loans during the week.
Eddie Redmayne received a Santa Barbara International Film Festival Virtuoso Award two years ago for his work on “Les Misérables.” Ruven Afanador photo
When Eddie Redmayne picks up the phone, he’s got handlers waiting outside, already prepared to take him to rehearsal. He’s had a full morning. On this particular Thursday, Oscar nominations have been announced and his portrayal of astrophysicist and all-around genius Stephen Hawking has earned him a Best Actor nomination and his co-star Felicity Jones, who plays Mr. Hawking’s wife Jane, a Best Actress nomination.
“I was in Los Angeles and asleep and I was woken up with this rapping on the door, and it was my manager at the hotel with a phone with a cacophony of screams from the team of people who have been supporting me for years,” he says. “I went from naught to 100 in the space of three seconds. I’ve been flying on adrenaline ever since.”
Jean-Michel Cousteau, along with son Fabien and daughter Céline, will be honored for their excellence in nature filmmaking. Ocean Futures Society
The well-loved Wes Anderson film “The Life Aquatic” offered a parody of the ocean-bound family— the patriarch with his zeal for the open sea, and a family following in his footsteps, some with enthusiasm, some begrudgingly— and it worked so well because a generation knew the love-object of its satire, the Cousteau family. The real Cousteau family, now in its third generation (or fourth if you count their children), has wavered a bit from their grandfather Jacques’ mission, but they have never stopped putting the earth and the oceans first.
And so on Wednesday night, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival honors father Jean-Michel, along with son Fabien and daughter Céline for the many documentaries, non-profits and awareness they have brought while carrying on the family name. The Richard Attenborough Award, which the festival has not awarded for five years, will feature an evening of interviews and screenings.
The late British star Alan Bates in a scene from “Sins of a Father” SBIFF photo
Happy 30th birthday Santa Barbara International Film Festival! Now expanded by one full day and moved up to open on a Tuesday, the fest that draws film and movie star lovers from all over keeps getting bigger and better. With 23 world premieres and 53 U.S. premieres, along with loads more films on offer, from shorts to documentaries and back again, it can get quite overwhelming, especially when time is of the essence and major decisions need to be made.
As of this writing, days and times have not been announced, so this is our cursory look at the upcoming line-up of films, section by section, with our favorites based on trailers, director reputation and spidey-sense. From experience, some films at SBIFF never see the light of day in terms of DVD, VOD or streaming after the fest circuit, so we’ve learned not to wait. So let’s get to it!
Jessica Lange poses for a photo with Demi Moore. Ms. Lange was joined by Kathy Bates and Ms. Moore for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s ninth annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, which was presented to the Academy Award-winning Ms. Lange.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival kicked off its upcoming 2015 installment two months ahead of time with its annual fundraiser at the Bacara on Sunday. The Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film ceremony honored actress Jessica Lange for her lifetime of work in the movies and did so with a gala dinner, a series of retrospective clips, and celebrity presenters. This was the ninth year for the popular event.
Currently, Jessica Lange is riding a career high as the central character in FX’s award-winning creepshow, “American Horror Story.” Because of its season specific stories, Jessica Lange has played a different character every season, from a spooky neighbor in the first one, to a cruel Mother superior in season two, a supreme witch in season three, and now the leader of a traveling freak zone in the ongoing fourth season. While other actors are resting on their laurels in their 60s, or playing to their familiar strengths, Ms. Lange keeps stretching her abilities, pushing herself to grander and more outré directions. And while Hollywood is having a hard time finding any meaty roles for women these days, Ms. Lange has owned her corner of the television world and won two Emmys.
“Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago” is an up-close look at the ancient spiritual pilgrimage known as the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James. Since the 9th century, millions have embarked on this pilgrimage across northern Spain.
Ten years ago, the documentary “What the Bleep Do We Know?” bundled together quantum physics and spirituality, brought in a slew of modern thinkers and went from an outsider documentary to a rousing success. Since then, the market for consciousness-raising films has expanded. So it makes sense that the Awakened World International Film Festival — a three-day combination film festival and conference — would honor the decade anniversary of this film. Executive director Barbara Fields also says our location also makes sense:
“We’ve done about 20 of these conferences in the same amount of years, all over the world,” she says. “But we picked Santa Barbara for this event because there’s an element here that somehow goes unappreciated, or is relegated to the ‘new age’, but this is a highly spiritual town.”
Flamenco is part of everybody in Spain,” says organizer Vibiana Pizano. Paco Villalta photo
If your only experience of flamenco is watching it every Fiesta on the steps of either the Courthouse or the Mission, well, the Flamenco Arts Festival has some news: that’s only the beginning. For three days the Festival brings in some of the most daring artists in the world of flamenco not just to perform, but to hold master classes in the art form, from dancing to guitar playing. It’s only three days, but the Festival hopes that for some it will stoke the flames of flamenco passion.
“This is a very high level professional production,” says owner and organizer Vibiana Pizano. “These are the people who have made flamenco what it is. These are the people who are the masters, who the kids in town learning flamenco aspire to be. We’re really fortunate that we can bring them here and inspire the kids who are learning flamenco now.”
As a frequent attendee at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Forum Lounge” over the years, it would be fair to say the events — every First Thursday at 7 p.m. — were unpredictable and just as often brilliant as they were half-baked. Sometimes there were short bursts of stunning performance, clocking in at a friendly 20 minutes; sometimes audiences found they had signed up for two hours. It was an experiment that had run its course in a way, but it was also pointing to something bigger, more consistent, and better defined. The On Edge Festival opens this Thursday, and promises the best of the performance art scene.
In its four days, the Festival, curated by Forum Lounge’s Heather Jeno Silva, will put on productions at MCA, as well as at Center Stage Theater, Municipal Winemakers, the Courthouse Sunken Gardens, and a gallery/event space on Canon Perdido.
