Although the spotlights are often on the “international” aspect of the 12 days Santa Barbara
International Film FestivalThe “Santa Barbara” part is well represented this year with short and long films of local filmmakers.
Here is a sample of some works by local filmmakers presented at the this year festival, which opens on Tuesday.
For the festival calendar, the downloadable program book and ticket information, visit Sbiff.org.
“Enchanted material”
Twenty-two years after “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion” won the Audience Prize for the best documentary Sbiff, Tom Piozet returns with the world first of “Enchanted material: the art of Robert Powell.”
The film is a work accepted of love, as Piozet and producer Geoff Rockwell, both Santa Claus
The residents of Barbara knew the artist well.
He tells how Powell was trained as an architect, but left his Australian house for India and South Asia in what has become a self -discovery trip. The immersion in the cultures of the Aboriginal peoples of Asia resulted in its emergence as a visionary ethnographic artist.
The visually breathtaking opening assembly browsing the viewers through the doors and windows of the complex and hyperreal images of Powell of sanctuaries, ceremonial spaces, ritual objects and symbols. His pen and ink drawings have shadows using watercolors made from traditional Tibetan Newar pigments.
On the other hand, the film uses artificial intelligence and the latest 4K technology, and was cut off at Piozet’s “Home Planet” studio on State Street. (The new Sbiff cinema center now has 4K projectors.) The aging photographs and images are very magnificent, having been “cleaned” with AI.
The drawing of Powell of a Chinese monastery adapts perfectly when it is superimposed on a historical photo, for example, transforming “anthropology into art”, according to Piozet.
“Rob was lucky, the courage or the destiny to follow his passion,” he said. “Was it a coincidence or fate?” Maybe all of our lives could have been different with a turn on the road. »»
“Perrot Mindegarten”
Amy Herdy Generally works in investigative journalism on issues such as mismanary management of sexual assault, corruption in the medical devices and celebrity scandals (“Allen against Farrow”).
THE Pavement And Emmy The winner was intrigued when she received an email with a
Documentary on a woman who had been a member of worship as a young girl. She managed to meet Jennifer Taylor O’ConnorAn animal coach in Jupiter, Florida.
She also met Ellie, a Goffin cockatoo that Taylor O’Connor learned to read basic words and draw letters with her beak. The parrot also uses a tablet to communicate its feelings and needs. This is where “Perrot Mindegarten” has been designed.
“I said,” Oh my God, this story is not at all on her having been in a worship. It is his incredible journey and his connection with this bird, and his desire to give voice to this sensitive little being who had been speechless ”, recalls Herdy, who divides his time between Santa Barbara and a Farm in Washington.
“In his heart,” Parrot Kindergarten “is a joyful and inspiring story of love and connection, and it is always necessary in the world.”
“Row of life”
In April 2020, paralympian and sailor veteran Angela Madsen I left to be the first paraplegic woman and the oldest to row solo through the Pacific Ocean – 2,500 miles from Los Angeles in Honolulu.
Madsen held six World Records Guinness For rowing, crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice, brought back the Indian Ocean, went around Great Britain and crossed the Pacific Ocean.
She contacted University of South California cinema student Soraya Simi on the set of the effort. The resulting film, “Row of life”, “ has its world premiere at the festival.
“She had seen my sailing documentary and knew that I had a passion for the ocean and understood life at sea,” said Simi. “Our chemistry was instantaneous. She is extremely sympathetic.
After graduating, Simi moved to Santa Barbara and spent a year filming Madsen and his partner, Deb Moeller, while they were preparing for Long Beach. The boat was equipped with six cameras.
Madsen celebrated his 60th birthday at sea and stayed in contact by satellite phone. The boat was followed using the GPS, but there were difficulties.
“History turned out to have been revealed,” said Simi. “I let him come to me. It took a while to treat, but I needed the prospect of browsing it. »»
Student shorts
In the fall of 2019, Kiara Lin was transferred from Santa Barbara High School at the Michigan boarding school Interlochen Arts Academy For his last year. In the spring of 2020, Cavid-19 closed campus and she had to go home to finish her diploma at a distance.
This experience inspired its short lively “snow day”, which is based as part of the festival’s narrative shorts block.
The 10-minute animated film, his thesis graduated from the American Music and Drama Academy, follows Iisa, a young girl who moves from her beloved house in the snowy north in a southwest arid desert. It lacks snow.
“IISA is a cunning character and attacks what she wants in the least conventional possible way – invoking a demon,” revealed Lin.
THE UC Santa Barbara Students who made the short film “QUWA” “met during the intensity of nine weeks last summer Coastal media project. The mission: work as a team to create a documentary focused on coastal environmental issues. The resulting 15 -minute “quwa” is included in the Festival documentary block block.
Catherine Scanlon, a member of the team, had heard of an island (called Quwa ‘by the Chumash) in the Slough Goleta which was once the most populous Chumash region in California. The Spaniards appointed him Mescalitlan. Today, it remains little: a bulldoze mound along SandSpit Road belonging to the Goleta health district.
“I had to ask myself,” What happened? ” How could he have left? “Said Jade Ipina. “I ended up wanting to become aware of the sacred lands that have been taken and destroyed.”
Historical images, maps and photos help answer these questions, as well as interviews with historians and tribal members of Chumash.
Although this is the first experience of the team in the cinema, all now plan to continue in the industry – Ipina and Scanlon in the film edition, Ryan Grant through the camera and Jonathan Coronado in sound.
It does not become more local than that: a free projection which culminates the 10-10-10 program of SBIFF-10 films created over five months by 10 pairs of local and collegial students acting as a scriptwriter-director.
Screening times and locations are available to Sbiff.org.
Kevin Costner’s “Horizon”
The festival presents the first two parts of “Horizon: an American saga”, “ Kevin Costner Epic proposed in four parts of the era of the civil war on the American West.
THE Oscar-The primordial of Santa Barbara directed, co-written and features in the series, also with Sienna Miller,, Sam Worthington,, Luke Wilson And Will Patton.
A free projection of part 1 is scheduled for Friday, followed by the first American in part 2 and a Q&R with Costner moderate by the director of the Roger Durling festival.
“Behind the Horizon”, a documentary on the manufacture of the saga, will project on Thursday, February 13, followed by a Q&R with director Mark Gillard and Costner.
Part 1 made its debut at 2024 Cannes Film Festival and is now in difficulty Max. Public publication date 2 has not been announced.