Though the spotlight often is on the “international” aspect of the 12-day Santa Barbara
International Film Festival, the “Santa Barbara” part is well represented this year with short and feature-length films by local filmmakers.
Here is a sampling of a few works by local filmmakers presented at this year’s festival, which opens Tuesday.
For the festival schedule, downloadable program book and ticket information, visit sbiff.org.
“Enchanted Matter”
Twenty-two years after “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion” won SBIFF’s Audience Award for Best Documentary, Tom Piozet returns with the world premiere of “Enchanted Matter: The Art of Robert Powell.”
The film is an admitted labor of love, as Piozet and producer Geoff Rockwell, both Santa
Barbara residents, knew the artist well.
It recounts how Powell was trained as an architect, but left his Australian home for India and south Asia in what became a journey of self-discovery. Immersion into the cultures of Asia’s Indigenous people resulted in his emergence as a visionary ethnographic artist.
The visually stunning opening montage whisks viewers through doors and windows in Powell’s intricate, hyperreal images of shrines, ceremonial spaces, ritual objects, and symbols. His pen and ink drawings have shadings using watercolors made from traditional Tibetan Newar pigments.
In contrast, the film utilizes artificial intelligence and the latest 4K technology, and was cut at Piozet’s “Home Planet” studio on State Street. (SBIFF’s new Film Center now has 4K projectors.) Decades-old photographs and footage are crisply gorgeous, having been “cleaned up” with AI.
Powell’s drawing of a Chinese monastery fits perfectly when superimposed over a historic photo, for example, turning “anthropology into art,” according to Piozet.
“Rob had the luck, guts or fate to follow his passion,” he said. “Was it chance or fate? Maybe all our lives could have been different with a turn in the road.”
“Parrot Kindergarten”
Amy Herdy usually works in investigative journalism on issues such as the military’s mishandling of sexual assault cases, corruption in the medical device industry, and celebrity scandals (“Allen vs. Farrow”).
The Peabody and Emmy winner was intrigued when she received an email pitching a
documentary about a woman who had been a cult member as a young girl. She arranged to meet Jen Cunha, an animal trainer in Jupiter, Florida.
She also met Ellie, a Goffin’s cockatoo who Cunha has taught to read basic words and draw letters with her beak. The parrot also uses a tablet to communicate her feelings and needs. That’s when “Parrot Kindergarten” was conceived.
“I said, ‘Oh gosh, this story isn’t at all about her having been in a cult. This is about her incredible journey and connection with this bird, and her desire to give voice to this small sentient being who had been voiceless,’” recalled Herdy, who splits her time between Santa Barbara and a farm in Washington.
“At its heart, ‘Parrot Kindergarten’ is a joyous, inspiring story of love and connection, and that’s always needed in the world.”
“Row of Life”
In April 2020, Paralympian and Marine veteran Angela Madsen set off to be the first paraplegic and oldest woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean — 2,500 miles from Los Angeles to Honolulu.
Madsen held six Guinness World Records for rowing, crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice, rowed the Indian Ocean, circumnavigated Great Britain and crossed the Pacific Ocean.
She contacted University of Southern California film student Soraya Simi about filming the effort. The resulting film, “Row of Life,” has its world premiere at the festival.
“She had seen my sailing documentary and knew I had a passion for the ocean and understood life at sea,” Simi said. “Our chemistry was instant. She’s immensely likable.”
After graduating, Simi moved to Santa Barbara and spent a year filming Madsen and her partner, Deb Moeller, as they prepared in Long Beach. The boat was outfitted with six cameras.
Madsen celebrated her 60th birthday at sea and kept in contact via satellite phone. The boat was tracked using GPS, but there were difficulties.
“The story revealed itself,” Simi said. “I let it come to me. It took a while to process, but I needed the perspective of going through it.”
Student Shorts
In fall 2019, Kiara Lin transferred from Santa Barbara High School to Michigan boarding school Interlochen Arts Academy for her senior year. In spring 2020, COVID-19 closed the campus, and she had to return home to complete her degree remotely.
That experience inspired her animated short “Snow Day,” which screens as part of the festival’s Narrative Shorts block.
The 10-minute animated film, her graduate thesis for the American Music and Drama Academy, follows Iisa, a young girl who relocates from her beloved home in the snowy north to an arid Southwestern desert. She misses snow.
“Iisa is a wily character, and goes after what she wants in the least conventional way possible — by summoning a demon,” Lin revealed.
The UC Santa Barbara students who made the short film “quwa’” met during last summer’s nine-week intensive Coastal Media Project. The assignment: Work as a team to create a documentary focused on issues related to the coastal environment. The resulting 15-minute “quwa’” is included in the festival’s Documentary Shorts block.
Team member Catherine Scanlon had heard about an island (called quwa’ by the Chumash) in the Goleta Slough that once was the most heavily populated Chumash area in California. The Spanish named it Mescaltitlan. Today, little of it remains: a bulldozed mound along Sandspit Road owned by the Goleta Sanitary District.
“I had to ask myself, ‘What happened to it? How could it just be gone?’” Jade Ipina said. “I ended up wanting to bring up awareness of sacred lands that were taken and destroyed.”
Historical images, maps and photos help answer those questions, along with interviews by historians and Chumash tribal members.
Though this was the team’s first experience in film, all of them now plan to continue in the industry — Ipina and Scanlon in film editing, Ryan Grant in camera work and Jonathan Coronado in sound.
It doesn’t get more local than this: a free screening that culminates SBIFF’s 10-10-10 program — 10 films created over five months by 10 pairs of local high school and college students acting as screenwriter-director duos.
Screening times and locations are available at sbiff.org.
Kevin Costner’s “Horizon”
The festival presents the first two parts of “Horizon: An American Saga,” Kevin Costner’s proposed four-part Civil War-era epic about the American West.
The Oscar-winning Santa Barbara resident directed, co-wrote and stars in the series, also starring Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson and Will Patton.
A free screening of Part 1 is set for Friday, followed by the U.S. premiere of Part 2 and a Q&A with Costner moderated by festival director Roger Durling.
“Behind the Horizon,” a documentary about the making of the saga, will screen Thursday, Feb. 13, followed by a Q&A with director Mark Gillard and Costner.
Part 1 debuted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and is now streaming on Max. The public release date of Part 2 has not been announced.