The fifth annual Santa Barbara Ocean Film Festival will be showing this Wednesday and Thursday nights, October 22 and 23, at the Marjorie Luke Theatre. And, in a last-minute addition, fest films screen on Friday night, October 24, at the Maritime Museum. The festival boasts a compilation of 13 international films about the ocean by way of fiction, science, technology, and conservation.

Tonight’s lineup includes this year’s “Best Ocean Adrenaline Film”: Sharkman, a 90-minute movie by Joe Kennedy that aims to diminish the bad reputation of white sharks as bloodthirsty creatures, a notoriety that has led to their dwindling population. Tonight’s presentation, as well as Thursday’s, also includes an intermission where prizes worth up to $500 will be raffled off; raffle tix cost $5.

On Thursday, the festival will screen what the organizers selected as the “Best Ocean Film”: Once Upon a Tide, a partially animated short that combines a girl’s journey to the coast with the dreamlike, and at times desperate, callings of a wounded ocean through a magical shell.

The longest film on Thursday will screen last. Called The Original Whale Riders, it tells the tale of a parasitologist whose goal is to study whale lice in order to prevent what he sees as the unnecessary deaths of the large mammals.

The third night of screenings on Friday, October 24, will be at the Maritime Museum and feature the runner-up films in the competition as well as the winners for “Best Marine Conservation” and “Best Ocean Travel.”

Tickets are $12 for each night and can be purchased at the door.

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