Segueing From SBIFF

After hundreds of screenings and appearances by more Academy Award-hopefuls (and likely winners) gathered in one place this side of the Oscar luncheon, the 38th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival wrapped last weekend. But there’s still plenty of movie magic around beyond the cineplex and streaming. 

UCSB Arts & Lectures’ annual visit from the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour alights at the Arlington Theatre for the 31st time to screen 17 of the world’s best short films and videos on mountain subjects, ranging from extreme sports to mountain culture and environment, over two different programs (Tuesday, Feb. 28, and Wednesday, March 1). Entries come from all over North America and around the world, and range in length from Continuum, Canada’s two-minute meditation on flow, to Switzerland’s Wild Waters, which runs 45 minutes and was actually edited for the tour. Tickets and details at (805) 893-3535 or www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.

The Carsey-Wolf Center’s Black Hollywood series screens Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, a historical action-epic set amidst the brutal African slave trade in the 1800s that stars Viola Davis and was strangely snubbed by the Oscars this year. Production designer Akin McKenzie does the Q&A thing after the Feb. 28 screening. 

Finally, SBIFF itself dives right back into the film-and-filmmaker fray on Sunday, Feb. 26, with a Riviera Theatre screening of We Have a Ghost, which began streaming on Netflix two days earlier. Writer/director Christopher Landon, who previously helmed Freaky, will be interviewed on stage after the credits roll on the film about a family becoming internet sensations and the targets of a shadowy government agency after finding a ghost with a murky past haunting their new house. The event is part of the Cinema Society series but open to the public for free. Info at www.sbiff.org.