Post-SBIFF Special Screenings

Hollywood has hoofed it back down to L.A. Independent filmmakers from across the globe have moved on to their next festival. Documentary directors are diving into new projects. Yes, SBIFF 41 is in the rearview mirror. But fret not, plenty of foreign films, mini-budget movies, daring documentaries, arthouse wonders, and retrospectives are still around, not least through SBIFF itself, which now runs six screens in town, meaning – just as in the other arts – Santa Barbara is now an enviable haven for movies of the non-blockbuster variety, capable of all sorts of programming including classics, thematic screenings, and much more. 

Indeed, SBIFF has promised to screen an independent film, a foreign film, a retrospective or restoration, a documentary, and a family film every day at the gleaming newly-refurbished McHurley Film Center, which was quickly put through its paces during SBIFF. Plus, the Riviera is also revved up for its variety of cinematic splendors. Check the website (www.sbiff.org) for full schedules and ticketing. 

Meanwhile, some other presenters’ venues are able to grab the spotlight again, including UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center (CWC), where the multiple series of screenings continue this week with director Marcel Ophuls’ 1976 documentary The Memory of Justice. The movie posits the Nuremberg Trials as a truly singular event in its consequential reckoning with crimes against humanity, a statement made in the aftermath of atrocities committed in Algeria and Vietnam. Sadly, given today’s ongoing conflicts around the world – as well as within and just beyond our borders – that position comes off as even more current half a century later. The full 278-minute film, which was recently restored, screens at the Pollock Theatre on February 21 after an introduction by Ophuls’ grandson Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert, a member of UCSB’s Germanic and Slavic Studies department. 

Next Thursday, February 26, CWC screens another film from the same year in Chulas Fronteras, newly restored in 4K for its 50th anniversary and presented alongside the 1979 short Del Mero Corazón. Chulas celebrates the famed Mexican American musicians of the borderlands, the migrant farming communities from which they come, the strong family bonds of Tejanos, and the social protest ethos inscribed in their music. A performance by corrido singer-songwriter Gallo Armado (Fernando Ríos) will precede the screening, which will be followed by a panel discussion. 

On March 3, CWC veers into Oscar fever in advance of the Academy Awards show with a public discussion with SBIFF’s long-standing and nowadays most
prolific tribute interviewer Scott Feinberg. The Hollywood Reporter’s executive editor of awards will share inside info on how Oscar races are conducted (and won), including breaking down what to expect at the March 15 ceremony, discussing favorites, rivalries and potential upsets with film prof and interim CWC director Ross Melnick. 

Elsewhere in the Oscar Opportunities category, one of the only gaps in SBIFF’s incredibly comprehensive Academy Award coverage will start on February 20. That’s the solitary date across the U.S. and Canada when all 15 of the nominated short films covering documentary, live action and animation categories will be screened sequentially in three separate packages. Locally, the shorts will be shown – where else? – at SBIFF’s gleaming new McHurley Film Center with a rotating schedule from Feb. 20-26, on one of six screens SBIFF now operates. 

BANFF Is Back, Illuminate Reinvigorates 

UCSB Arts & Lectures once again presents the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, as always screening a significant swath of the outdoor-oriented shorts – ranging from 1-45 minutes in duration – over two successive nights boasting entirely different programs February 24-25. Although A&L Associate Director Emeritus Roman Baratiak is happily retired, he still serves as curator and host for the BANFF fest tour that shows top-flight mountain adventure films on subjects ranging from ice climbing and extreme alpining to mountain culture and the environment, pairing adrenaline-packed thrills with tales of human potential and the natural world. Each night’s screenings run more than two-and-a-half hours. 

Visit https://artsandlectures.ucsb.edu for full descriptions and screeners

Down the road, the Illuminate Film Festival has a new umbrella organization, executive team and dates for its third presentation since relocating from Sedona to Santa Barbara in 2024. The spiritual/ecological fest has postponed the re-jiggered weekend of screenings sporting a refreshed format from May to October 2-4, 2026. Accordingly, the deadline to submit short films (no more than 90 seconds) to the 2026 Oneness of Humanity Micro-Short Film Contest has been pushed to April 1. 

Visit https://illuminatefilmfestival.com

Moore Environmental Movie and Meetup

Captain Charles Moore discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch while returning from a Hawaii-to-California yacht race in 1997. The swirling expanse of floating plastic debris became the focus of his life’s work, and his landmark study on microplastics in the patch revealed that for every kilogram of plankton in the ocean, there are six kilograms of plastics. Capt. Moore is coming to Santa Barbara for an event that begins with a screening of a 2019 documentary by the Korean Broadcasting System exposing the alarming reality of the plastic patch followed by a Q&A with Moore, one of the world’s leading voices on plastic pollution. The February 20 event, sponsored by the Community Environmental Council (CEC) and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper at CEC’s Environmental Hub, is free.  

Visit https://cecsb.org/events/captain-charles-moore-lecture