Tag archives: SBIFF
The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the 2015 comedy-drama that earned writer-director Marielle Heller an Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature. The film received a lofty score of 87 from review aggregate Metacritic for its sharp, funny, and provocative account of one girl’s sexual and artistic awakening in 1970s San Francisco, largely told […]
SBIFF’s first Film Talk of the year features Paul Walter Hauser, who got his start as a stand-up comedian before turning to acting where he has enjoyed a number of noteworthy roles. In addition to a litany of TV series guest shots and a few recurring roles, he proved a scene stealer at the movies […]
UCSB Arts & Lectures’ free outdoor fall film festival series of screenings at the West Wind Drive-In comes to a close with two Christmas classics, with a modern parable followed by a Jimmy Stewart tearjerker. In 2003’s Elf, Will Ferrell stars as an elf named Buddy who discovers that he’s actually a human whom Santa […]
If you haven’t yet checked out The Queen’s Gambit, deservedly one of the top-ranked shows on Netflix and one of the best original series in the streaming service’s catalog, now would be a good time to get started on the seven-episode series about a chess prodigy turned accomplished if tortured young woman. That’s because Scott […]
Santa Barbara surfer and filmmaker Heather Hudson, creator of the groundbreaking documentary surf films The Women and the Waves, has a new film she’s sharing with local audiences. 93 – Letters from Marge is the story of surf pioneer and icon Marge Calhoun (1924-2017) told through letters she wrote during the last years of her […]
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of John Van Hamersveld‘s iconic “Crazy World Ain’t it” emoji – it was called an illustration back in 1969 when Van Hamersveld created his first versions of the drawing at Bellevue Studio on Bonnie Brea in Echo Park and went on to develop the idea for a T-shirt graphic […]
UCSB Theater’s new show is generating historical perspective for the challenges of the pandemic UCSB Theater’s Generations, a new piece devised for Zoom and directed by Anne Torsiglieri, aims to make the best of the bad situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps finding the silver lining in the seemingly endless sequestering. Fashioned as an […]
Who knowingly purchases the former residence of a notorious serial killer? Meet Tom and Barbara, proud new owners of the most infamous house in Sacramento. The middle-aged couple purchased the residence where Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house where she murdered elderly and mentally disabled guests before cashing their Social Security checks in the 1980s. […]
The NatureTrack Film Festival began in 2018 as a way to raise funds and draw attention to the then-seven-year-old nonprofit NatureTrack Foundation, which brings schoolchildren out into nature for docent-led treks along trails in the Santa Ynez Valley. With nature now even more important during the pandemic as outdoor activity is far less conducive to […]
Normally a designation as a red zone would mean no parking or even stopping. But when it comes to pandemic procedures, the designation is more like rolling out a red carpet, as two weeks of reduced cases means more businesses can reopen. Accordingly, Metropolitan Theatres plans to welcome back moviegoers at two of the Santa […]
Longtime Santa Barbara writer Peggy O’Toole Lamb plumbed her own family history for her latest nonfiction book, Darling – Love Letters from WWII. The alumnus of UC Santa Barbara’s Teacher Education Program researched the letters that her uncle Frank J. Foster wrote to her aunt Catherine during WWII when he fought in the European Theater […]
Although there is still a dispute over whether it was Napoleon or Adam Smith who coined the phrase “The British are a nation of shopkeepers,” there is no dispute that beekeepers in Santa Barbara want to convince us that America is a “nation of beekeepers.” The Beelievers, a short documentary made by UCSB graduate filmmaker […]
Whales Without Walls, which screened at the 2020 Santa Barbara International Film Festival this past winter, is essentially a five-minute argument for a modern real-life solution to the issues that were addressed in the fiction film Free Willy. The mission of the Whale Sanctuary Project is to establish a model seaside sanctuary where whales and […]
Santa Barbara International Film Festival Film Talk finds its way to the Montecito hills for a viewing and discussion of The Garden is Singing, Karen Kasaba’s 11-minute paean to Ganna Walska’s Lotusland that screened as part of the 2019 film festival. Singing does a credible job of capturing the beauty, diversity, history, and breadth of […]
Vera Cruz, the short film by UCSB professor and veteran documentarian Christopher Jenkins that follows artist-architect Jeff Shelton as he cajoles the creative community into decorating the outside of a colorful house at 521 Santa Barbara Street, gets renewed focus as this week’s entry in the film festival’s new online series of screenings and discussions […]
Guitarist Bruce Goldish was one of Santa Barbara’s most beloved folk heroes even before his unfortunate run-in with an auxiliary police officer. That encounter forced the musician to temporarily halt his habit of bringing his van to Parking Lot. No. 9, pulling out his guitar, and entertaining and often mystifying State Street pedestrians coming out […]
Residents with a love for the outdoors – and isn’t that just about everyone in Montecito – might have a particular interest in the second event in Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s new Film Talk series that features viewings of short films produced locally followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. The 15-minute Trail Heads […]
In other SBIFF-related news, psychological thriller The Night has received a license for theatrical release in Iran, serving as a historic benchmark for the country’s filmmaking community as it is the first U.S.-produced film to receive such permission since the revolution more than 40 years ago. Why that matters in our little berg is that […]
The Riviera Theatre is once again closed due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19, and online screenings of new arts films have also come to a close, or at least hasn’t ramped up again as the new closures aren’t in effect nationwide. So turning even more local, SBIFF has segued into a new online […]
Film is a medium that lends itself perfectly to streaming and other methods of home delivery, perhaps a perfectly-placed panacea during the pandemic, entertainment-wise at least. No one needs an introduction to Netflix, Amazon Prime and the like, but perhaps some prodding is in order to visit our local cinematic specialists. The Santa Barbara International […]
