Indie Film Upstarting

When it comes to film festival action in Santa Barbara, the long-looming powerhouse event is the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF), leaning toward its 40th anniversary early next year. But Santa Barbara’s status as a film town also extends to humble but passionate specialty festivals. Consider the Jewish Film Festival, this weekend’s NatureTrack Film Festival (see story here), and the humble but hopeful upstart Santa Barbara Indie Film Festival — a very different kind of an SBIFF acronym.

Launched by founder/director and filmmaker Dave Haws a year ago, the second annual edition unveiled its full two-and-a-half-day program last weekend at the suitably intimate and historical Alhecama Theater. The slate of features, documentaries, and a bevy of short films kicked off on Friday night with Robert Redfield’s inspiring and carefully crafted documentary feature More than Just a Party Band. The screening found the film returning to the scene of an earlier run in this space, with the added appeal of a solo set by star/subject Spencer Barnitz himself.

Sneaking over to the festival in the cracks of a busy weekend, I was able to take in a good sampling of the festival fare and was duly impressed. Aloura Melissa Charles’s short film Under is a polished, well-acted, and emotionally loaded piece that manages to persuasively juggle themes of postpartum depression and human trafficking.

The documentary American Pot Story: Oaksterdam tells a sweeping and compelling story about the prehistory of California’s marijuana legalization adventure, tracing back to courageous crusaders in Oakland — Richard Lee and his charismatic deputy activist Dale Sky Jones — who seeded the process with their prophetic Prop. 19 campaign. The proposition was ill-fated and nearly turned Lee into a martyred criminal, but is a critical backstory to the weed legalization saga in our state, expansively conveyed here by Dan Katzir and his wife/co-director, Ravit Markus.

On the feature front, I was unable to catch Dennis Sandoval’s Salsipuedes Street — shot in Santa Barbara — but I had that discovery-style “Aha” moment upon experiencing the creative and resourceful film The Veteran. Auteur Jeremy Waltman’s non-linear portrait of the demise of an alcoholic Vietnam vet — powerfully portrayed by Joseph (son of Robert) Culp, richly embodies the can-do spirit and expressivity on a shoestring nature of indie filmmaking at its finest.

Narrative and production values are rough, but the impressionistic end result lures us into the film’s interior world. That world includes hermetic theatrics, references to Buster Keaton’s drollery, and with a weirdly savory blend of sight and sound. Touché.

As Katzir suggested, this fledgling festival could potentially have the fringe festival relationship that Slamdance has in the shadow of the Sundance Film Festival. Time and scale will tell.

For more information, see sbindiefilmfest.com.