Social Justice Films

Being a globally minded progressive town, it’s no wonder that the Fund for Santa Barbara’s Social Justice Award for Documentary Film has become such a compelling component to SBIFF.

“Our community’s ever-growing interest in these films and the issues that they explore is encouraging,” said the fund’s Geoff Green. “It is just one more indication that Santa Barbara is home to a lively and engaged community of individuals and organizations that are hungry for information, appreciate new perspectives and are eager to find solutions to some of the greatest social, economic, political, and environmental challenges we face.”

This year’s films in consideration represent a very broad range of issues and interests, and are scheduled to screen throughout the festival. They are:

• A People Uncounted, about Europe’s gypsies and how these often forgotten Roma people suffered greatly during the Holocaust;

• Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear, about the Burmese freedom fighter and her decades-long plight for justice in this recently opening Asian country;

• Dirty Energy, about the very personal and economic effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill that are persisting to this day;

• Give Up Tomorrow, about how one man has been locked up by the Filipino justice system for a crime he very clearly did not commit;

• Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?, about organized money and organized people in America;

• Into the Current, another look at Burma, this time focusing on a broad range of the country’s political prisoners;

• Letters from Iran, about the aftermath of the Green Revolution, which many feel triggered the later Arab Spring and yet did not change Iranian society;

• Pink Ribbons, Inc., about the breast cancer charity machine that’s both helped and hurt some of the anti-cancer cause;

• and Putin’s Kiss, about a Russian woman’s coming of age amidst the often corrupt political battleground of Moscow.

There’s also a Social Justice shorts program this year, with films about Costa Rica, Egypt, and the controversial Keystone oil pipeline.

A $25 (Platinum Pass-holders excepted), reservations-required filmmaker reception will be on Friday, Jan. 27, 5-7 p.m., at Sullivan Goss, 7 East Anapamu Street.

Call 805-962-9164 or see fundforsantabarbara.org.