Rowan Sullivan, Author at FilmRoot

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A Guide to SBIFF, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Whilst many of you were getting ready to cover the International Film Festival in Rotterdam or the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, I went to Santa Barbara to cover the 35^th edition of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF). Attracting around 100,000 attendees across 11 days of films, SBIFF is one of the largest film festivals in California running just after the equally prestigious Palm Springs Film Festival. It’s also one of the closest to Los Angeles, a city which surprisingly doesn’t have a single big film festival in the way that San Francisco, New York, and many cities around the world do, despite being the home of Hollywood. (More on Los Angeles’ film festivals later this year). Because of its proximity to Hollywood, and the fact that it takes place a few weeks before the Academy Awards, it’s always a stop for many of the directors and actors campaigning for Oscar glory.

That being said, I wasn’t there to interview A-list celebs on the red carpet or catch re-runs of some of the Academy Award contender. I was at SBIFF to sample its lineup of films from 50 countries, in particular, the films screening for their International and Spain/Latin American competition.

So how was it? You’ve probably read some of the quick reviews we’ve been posting from the films we’ve seen on the SBIFF page, but what was SBIFF actually like?

The Audiences

One thing I noticed during my first day at SBIFF – a Saturday – was that I was the youngest person in the theater for every screening. By a long way. Most of the audience were 50+ with most of them being seniors. One lady that sat next to me for one screening even commented that it was nice seeing a young folk at the festival. I’m 28, so not being the oldest isn’t new to me, but I’ve never felt so young in a movie theater. They also mentioned that they didn’t see a person under 40 at the Palm Springs festival which they attended the week before. Maybe it’s a small city thing. Maybe it’s a U.S. thing as the audiences at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles weren’t young either.

However, this definitely isn’t a Film Festival thing as the BFI London Film Festival has a lot of young cinema goers. The BFI do a great job at getting students and people in their 20’s into their screenings. They offer cheap tickets to anyone 25 and under 30 minutes before the screenings start if there’s still space available (I’ve never been turned away as film guest seats are always freed up). As a result, most of their screenings are full or close to it. It would be great to see similar initiatives to boost younger audiences at SBIFF to ensure the loyal older audience is still there in 40 years’ time.

The City

Santa Barbara is a great small city. If you’re there for the week reviewing films, you have plenty of options for places to eat State Street. It’s also just nice wandering around the mission style buildings – the place is pretty. You can even walk to the southeastern end of State Street if you want to chill on the beach, which is a rarity at a major film festival. Plus, those of you in Rotterdam and Sundance would no doubt appreciate the warm sunny weather that’s almost guaranteed daily in Santa Barbara.

However, one of the main downsides to Santa Barbara is that it isn’t cheap. The food options were more expensive than many areas of Los Angeles as well as London and Berlin. For those on a budget, I’d recommend living off the Ralph’s deli at West Carrillo Street/Chapala Street and bringing your own water if you don’t want to spend $10+ per meal. Accommodation also was expensive for the MLK day weekend, so I was relived that one of my relatives was able to host me from just outside the city (thanks Javi).

The Experience

Just like all the other film festivals I’ve attended, the queuing situation at SBIFF was organized chaos. Before every block of screenings at the Metro 4 theater on State Street there were at least 5 lines full of people. The lines would spill onto the streets and completely block the sidewalk on that side of the road, so anyone not attending the festival has to cross the road to walk past it. However, I never saw or heard anyone complaining, apart from one guy cycling along the sidewalk blasting music that should have been on the road anyway. So even though it appeared chaotic, it did work. People queued up for the films they wanted to see and appeared to get to see them thanks to the many lines.

There were a lot of Q&A’s too, which is what helps a film festival to stand out. At SBIFF they had a lot of special stand-alone Q&A’s with Hollywood celebrities, but they also had roughly a 40% turn out for crew and/or cast member Q&A’s for all the international films which is a pretty good turnout for a small city like Santa Barbara. All of them were managed pretty well, even though, unfortunately, no film festival is immune from bad audience questions.

The volunteers were all great too, so it was a nice touch that SBIFF included a slide saying “Please give a round of applause for all the volunteers at SBIFF” before the start of every film.

The Films

Last, but not least, how were the movies at SBIFF?

Overall, I thought the selection of films could have been better. As soon as I saw the schedule, I was a disappointed in the lack of diversity in the films selected for the festival. There were over 70 World Premieres and films from 50 countries, but almost all of the international films were from Europe and the Americas. Most noticeably was a distinct lack of African films; I only noticed one feature film from North Africa (Papicha, the Academy Award submission from Algeria) meaning there were zero sub-Saharan African films. There was also a very slim selection of films from Asia, apart from the odd Turkish film and screenings of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.

The International Competition

The lack of diversity was most obvious in the International Competition, in which 10 of the 12 films were European. The other two were Canadian, leaving 4 of the 6 movie producing continents left unrepresented.

Nevertheless, here’s my rankings of the 9 films I saw that competed in SBIFF’s International Competition:

The top three stood out, whilst the bottom 4 disappointed.

Spain/Latin American Competition

The Spain/Latin American competition made up for some of the diversity woes of the International competition with 11 films from 3 different continents (ironically one more than the international competition).

Of the 7 films I saw from the competition, there was a distinct split between Art-house festival fare and cheesy heartwarming films. The bottom two fell into the latter whilst the top 4 fell into the former. The top 4 were 4 of my favorite films I saw at the festival, showing that the Spain/Latin American competition didn’t just trump the International competition on diversity but quality as well.

Best of the Rest

The International and Spain/Latin American competitions weren’t the only films I managed to see thanks to some screeners sent out early by the filmmakers. The two best screeners I received were for Out Deh, a documentary about three inspiring young men from Jamaica and Song Sparrow, a short film depicting refugees being trafficked in the back of a refrigerated truck. The other short films I saw were all interesting too even if they weren’t perfectly executed.

Whilst it didn’t go as far as Palm Springs, which screened every single Academy Award submission for Best International Feature Film, SBIFF also screened a few submissions that haven’t received U.S. distribution yet.

Conclusion

Overall, SBIFF is a festival worth attending. Whilst you may not find a program that’s as diverse or weird as some of the other film festivals in California, you will at least get to be in a beautiful small city by the beach.

If you’re based near Santa Barbara, make sure you leave time to attend in 2021. Or, if you’re based in Los Angeles or further afield, it’s definitely worth making a long weekend trip and mix International films with mountain hikes and strolls along the sea.

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Song Sparrow – Short Film Competition – SBIFF

In Song Sparrow the freezing temperature of a smuggler’s truck turns a group of refugees’ hopes for a better future into a struggle for survival.

Song Sparrow starts in an eerie forest, where a group of people are peering into the back of a meat truck with meat carcasses hanging from the roof. This is their ominous escape route. You can feel their nervousness in their blinking eyes and the cutting between the meat truck and their faces, alone in the forest. Their anxiety turns into excitement whilst they’re in the back of the truck as the refugees share blinking looks and dance to music. However, this changes when the truck’s refrigeration system kicks in.

It’s a short animated film that contains everything you want to see from a short animated film. Firstly, it gains true story points for basing the story on two tragic events (NBC News: 71 Refugees Found Dead in Truck in Austrian Highway, BBC News: Essex Lorry Deaths) that didn’t get the coverage they should have. Secondly, for its short film creds, it tells it’s story concisely and precisely whilst taking enough time to evoke sympathy for the characters involved. Lastly, for it’s animation creds, it’s uniquely animated with puppets with blinking eyes. They don’t say anything, but you can feel their anxiety, their relief, their excitement, and their despair in their blinking eyes. It’s proof that something so simple can be so effective.

However, creating the sets were not simple. To give you a better perspective on how they were made, and to prove how impressive it is visually, here’s a quick comment from the Director Farzaneh Omidvarnia and some images from the set:

“Firstly, the size of the puppets and sets are larger than they look (see the attached pictures); the Puppets are each around 70 cm tall. Secondly, it is a live action animation and I tried to animate and record the movements lively. The filming process took 80 days. I applied animatronics to develop the blinking eyes and eyeballs, and the eyes are controlled remotely. The movements are not conducted by stop motion. Nevertheless, I consider this a developing method that I am actually trying to exploit and advance it. In fact, it might be more challenging than for example stop-motion for some scenes, but I believe regarding the contents, it might convey the message and senses more clearly. So all my hope is that this technique gets established more strongly through my next movies.”
Farzaneh Omidvarnia

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Three Shorts From SBIFF – Tribes, Kopitiam, Mochitsuki

Here’s a quick round up of three shorts from SBIFF.

1. Tribes – SBIFF Shorts

Tribes is a short film in which an African-American man, an Arab-American man, and a white man rob a subway car in New York. Problem is, they don’t want to rob people from their own race.

It’s a funny concept, but the tone is diluted. Tribes starts off seriously before breaking into a funny argument between two of the robbers. However, their hold of their hostages and the credibility of the film quickly dissipates when the passengers start adding to the robbers debate. It feels like they’re interrupting the film by adding unnecessary quips.

The rest of the credibility is seriously lost when one of the robbers starts siding with the hostages and starts a long monologue. Monologues can work, however, unfortunately this one is backed by a crescendo of uplifting music that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Pepsi commercial. It just makes it feel fake. It’s a good message but it feels way too preachy and fake like the ‘I voted for Obama’ dad in Get Out.

That being said, I believe this script is perfect for the stage. The setting, monologues, and arguments would fit it perfectly. Plus it would feel much more authentic without the music.

2. Kopitiam – SBIFF Shorts

Kopitiam is a short documentary about a coffee shop owner in NYC and her experience living as a Malaysian in the U.S.

It’s interesting to hear about how we live through food. The coffee shop owner raises some interesting points about how everyone has a cooking blueprint which allows cooks to live on after their death. Also how food and how you cook it is one way of passing down your culture – but you have to accept that your work will be adapted

However, I wish Kopitiam focused on one thing. You hear fragments about her shop, her dad, her partner, growing up, cooking, maintaining culture, but they’re only communicated in short sentences. It doesn’t give her enough time to truly share her life and experience. Because it’s quick, we don’t get enough time to identify with her and walk in her shoes.

3. Mochitsuki – SBIFF Shorts

Mochitsuki features a Japanese American family in California getting together for New Years to partake in Mochitsuki – an annual gathering to make mochi. Like Kopitiam it features an Asian American family using cooking and food as a way to pass on heritage, legacy, and maintain their link to Japanese culture.

However, in contrast to Kopitiam, Mochitsuki passes on tradition through their own family gathering, rather than by sharing it with anyone interested. It shows the eldest generation of the one family partaking in the ritual with the newest generation of the family – old and young working together to show the direct transmission of culture from generation to generation. It’s a testament to the strength of Japanese culture in this family that has survived through the adversity of internment. Maybe that shared hardship has created a stronger culture.

Mochitsuki is engaging because it focuses on one thing (the mochi making ceremony) and uses it to tell a brief story about this Japanese American family instead of trying to cover lots of different stories.

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Lane 4 – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Lane 4, Amanda is most comfortable in the water. Lacking her parents’ attention at home, swimming is the only thing she has. But she’s not alone in the pool. Priscila, the star of her swim team, becomes her friend and rival in the pool and in life.

The film starts with Amanda completely still, floating underwater in the fetal position in a swimming pool. By comparing the swimming pool to a womb, the opening image shows Amanda’s desire to return to the womb, to escape all the stresses of her daily life (see Freud’s Thanatos Instinct). In the pool, she can escape from her parents who don’t understand her, the social pressures of maintaining a ‘cool’ image, and her own growing pains. However, unfortunately for her, she cannot stay underwater forever. Eventually she has to surface for air. When she breaks from the fetal position and swims to the surface, it’s symbolic of her second birth. It’s her rebirth as a woman and a world full of expectations for her.

The scenes of Amanda underwater are the corner stones of Lane 4. Each one of them indicate her underlying desires. First, as mentioned above, she’s reborn from a girl into a woman, even though she desires to return to the simplicity of the womb. Secondly, she dives to the bottom of the pool on her own to reluctantly collect a hairband given to her by her mother. This image symbolizes her reluctance to grow up and tie back her hair – something that her mum thinks she should do to show off her ears. The third underwater scene shows her diving towards Priscila’s boyfriend. This scene starts to reveal her desire to assume Priscila’s position as the coolest girl on the swim team which are confirmed in the last underwater scene to end the film. Above water, Amanda is mostly silent and rarely reveals what she thinks, but underwater, she reveals all of her underlying desires and urges.

Lane 4 contains most of the typical coming of age film tropes, such as:

Dealing with absent parents.
Dealing with friends who have grown up before you.
Dealing with a dad that still sees you as a little girl.
Jealousy of the popular girl at school.
Wanting to go out with most attractive boy at school.
Her first period.

As a result, it will feel very familiar to other coming of age films, such as Alba. The main thing that sets apart Lane 4 from other films is that it’s set within a competitive swim club. This environment, and the underwater scenes that reveal her hidden desires, made Lane 4 one of the most memorable films at SBIFF.

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Land Of Ashes – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Land of Ashes, thirteen year old Selva lives in a small costal town surrounded by sea and dense forest. Her mother has passed away, so she shares the duties of looking after her frail old grandfather with Elena, an older woman who comes and goes as she wishes.

Elena is the only female role model that Selva has, but their relationship is a strange one. Selva obviously needs her for companionship and help navigating her path to adulthood, but she also despises her. She spits in her food and trades vicious insults with her over the dinner table which eventually unravels into laughs thanks to her grandfather. Later, Elena invites her dancing, but disappears soon after hitting the dance floor in order to score a few drugs and never returns. It reinforces Selva’s vulnerability and her inevitable life alone.

To keep herself company, Selva manages to conjure visions of her dead mother. These visions help to guide her through the challenges she faces, such as looking after her grandfather, and they also help her to come to terms with the impermanence of life and her future life alone. Her grandfather’s death is inevitable, but it’s not until Elena’s disappearance that she realizes that she will be living alone. Seeing her mother in the nature around her provides her with the comfort that her family will continue to live in her and her surroundings after her grandfather passes away.

Land of Ashes was one of the best films I saw at SBIFF. It creates a vivid world from just a few images of the natural world they live in – mostly of the night sky and dense jungle, but also of the local fauna. The magic in it adds some mysticism about Selva’s future alone and the life in the wilderness around us.