Tag archives: filmmaker
Walking in the grass, feeling the morning dew, hearing the serenity of the place – we might think of a beautiful park surrounded by nature, our senses alive with feeling. But instead here we are back in 1994 – when the Devereux Slough was still a golf course. What so intrigued a businessman that he […]
There were many COVID casualties, beyond the loss of precious life. Like ceremony. So many of us were forced to say goodbye to loved ones without the spiritual and emotional closure that comes with gathering closely with community to celebrate the lives that were lost. One such loss that hit hard here was the passing […]
The list of endeavors Montecito filmmaker Niki Byrne took on before she was out of her mid-20s would put most of us older adults to shame with the breadth and variety of her adventures: soccer player, race car driver, advertising copywriter, helicopter pilot, vegetable chopper for a Top Chef winner, photographer, painter (her portrait of […]
We also spoke with Michael Love, the veteran screenwriter (he authored the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated, Gaby: A True Story, in 1987) and director with dozens of credits to his name, including multiple short docs and a few features that have premiered at SBIFF over the years. His 2021 entry, Dist-Dance, chronicles the ecstatic […]
Nearly nine years after his death, prolific Montecito underwater filmmaker Mike deGruy’s world comes back to life via Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy, the documentary written and directed by his wife and filmmaking partner Mimi Armstrong deGruy. The film doesn’t only cover his underwater life, where deGruy most assuredly blew past […]
The Montecito foothills are more than a thousand miles from both the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA’s headquarters in Houston – not to mention 234,000 miles from the moon – but the rolling greenery amounts to much more than a footnote for part-time Montecito resident Steven C. Barber spearheading a project to fashion […]
Alan Kozlowski passed away peacefully the morning of September 17 with loved ones by his side. Alan lived a most extraordinary life. Born in Hayward, California in 1948, Alan grew up in the Bay Area spending many of his early days on the streets of Haight-Ashbury. Although he eventually created a multi-million-dollar Hollywood post-production company […]
It’s easy to see why Katharine O’Brien calls her Montecito upbringing “a Cinderella Story.” The future filmmaker was just nine years old when her mother, Carla, a Santa Barbara native who had moved back home after years on the East Coast following a divorce from Katharine’s father, met Stephen Hahn, the distinguished billionaire art dealer […]
In what was 2019’s largest residential real estate transaction in Santa Barbara County, filmmaker George Lucas closed escrow on a two-acre property adjacent to his existing property on Padaro Lane in December. The $28M off-market deal was sold by listing agent Susan Pate of Compass, with SB Brokers’ Troy Hoidal representing the buyer, according to […]
Santa Barbara documentary filmmaker/journalist Kevin McKiernan was a rookie NPR reporter in 1973 when he was embedded at Wounded Knee during the famous armed American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation in South Dakota that left two dead and scores arrested. Embedded himself, actually, as McKiernan had to circumvent government roadblocks surrounding the village and resort to […]
Last January, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival considered cancelling the city’s premiere cinematic event in the wake of the Thomas Fire and the devastating Montecito debris flows before ultimately deciding to go ahead, partly as a healing offering. This Wednesday, SBIFF 34 kicks off with a locally-produced opening night film catalyzed by another Montecito-related […]
