After briefly considering canceling the milestone 40th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival in the wake of the Los Angeles fires, SBIFF did postpone announcement of the full lineup and schedule for a few days. But the slate is now complete for the fest, which runs February 4-15, its longest iteration yet, showcasing a total […]
The world of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival keeps expanding. What started as a tiny weekend film festival 40 years ago – a way to draw tourists to our seaside berg during the winter off-season lull – has exploded into a juggernaut of a festival that boasts more star power than any place outside […]
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Trick question: Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – one of this summer’s hits –twice as good as the 1988 original? Not so much, which is why seeing Tim Burton’s now-classic 36-year-old Beetlejuice on Halloween seems like a special sort of holiday treat as it opens the Ojai Film Festival with a free screening in Libbey Park. The […]
Academy Award-nominated French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve gets SBIFF’s superstar treatment via a curated career retrospective of seven of the director’s important movies, including Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune Parts One & Two. The films – which have garnered a collective 28 Oscar nominations (with Dune 2 still pending) will screen in […]
UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center kicks off its CWC Docs series on October 8 with Borderland | The Line Within, the uber-timely investigation of immigration that dives into the border-industrial complex – the way businesses profit through the undocumented workers and the attendant human cost. The film, which was produced over five years with the assistance of […]
This weekend offers an additional opportunity to aid area first responders in their mental/emotional health challenges — which is also a big part of One805’s oeuvre — via a world premiere event of the documentary short film 9-1-1 Project Harmony at the Lobero on September 8. The film covers the program of the same name, […]
Missed Robert Zemeckis at the Granada earlier this month when the Montecito moviemaker made it down the mountain to intro Romancing the Stone and launch the four-film retrospective as part of the Home Movies Centennial celebration? No worries. Zemeckis will also be on hand for a pre-screening chat at SBIFF’s Riviera Theatre prior to a […]
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is not only adding a 12th day for its 40th incarnation, slated for February 4-15, but is also finally employing the Riviera Theatre, SBIFF’s recently refurbished state-of-the-art year-round home, as a venue for the festival. The Riv will have its own dedicated film pass. All of the 2025 SBIFF […]
It’s also time for the 15th Asian American Film Series, whose films speak to the Asian American experience as an exploration of the history and cultures of the Asian communities that once thrived in and around the Santa Barbara Presidio area. Held at 6 pm on Fridays in July at the Alhecama Theatre, the 2024 […]
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Back in 2018, Dawa Tarchin Phillips, resident teacher of Bodhi Path Santa Barbara and co-founder and former Director of Education of UCSB’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential, led two dozen people on an around-the-world pilgrimage, visiting 17 sacred sites in five countries on four continents in 30 days. “The intention was to learn about […]
Do you remember the pre-streaming, pre-Tivo, pre-DVD, pre-VCR days when Santa Barbara was among nearly every artsy city in the country that had cinematic art houses showing classic movies and curated retrospective among screenings of indie and foreign films? Now with its new After Hours weekend series, SBIFF’s Riviera Theatre is in many ways returning […]
The results are in and the awards handed out at the second annual Montecito Student Film Festival on March 23 at Westmont’s Porter Theatre. About 150 people attended the festival throughout the day to watch 41 films, pared down from the more than 500 that were submitted. Chase Olivera, an 18-year-old student at College of […]
On the Wave Productions’ 22-minute documentary short film titled, Greetings from Summerland, Birthplace of Offshore Oil, is headed to Washington, D.C.’s bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. The film was produced and directed by filmmakers Harry Rabin and Joey Szalkiewicz. It premiered at the SBIFF and is scheduled for the Marjorie Luke Theatre for Earth Day. Its […]
Santa Barbara certainly has no dearth of film festivals, but until now there hasn’t been a festival that directly addresses the region’s rare confluence of people who are both cinema-savvy and socially conscious. If Illuminate hadn’t come along, perhaps someone would have had to invent one to interact at that intersection. Fortunately, the Illuminate Film […]
