Feelgood to Go Festivaling

In its Second Annual Nesting in Santa Barbara, the Illuminate Film Festival Brought its Feelgood and New Age–adjacent Big Top Downtown

Tom Piozet, second from left, speaks about his film at Illuminate Film Festival 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

First, are you illuminated? Have you ever been illuminated? Well, I have.

We’re talking about the Illuminate Film Festival, bearing the marketing mantra “looking through the lens of love.” The festival blew through Santa Barbara last weekend for a tapestry of film screenings, panel discussions, meditations, parties, and networking ops, all neatly organized in a two-block radius downtown. A central “Hub” space was a conveniently located gathering space, across the street from the primary screening site, the New Vic (apart from the opening night gala at The Granada Theatre), while morning meditations sessions held forth in the Art & Soul Gallery.

The Illuminate Festival was launched by founder Danette Wolpert Holman in Sedona in 2014 and based in Santa Barbara for the past two editions, headed up by Interim Executive Director Kia Kiso and Artistic Director Téana David. The festival is rooted in the loosely described field of “conscious cinema,” which can encompass motivational themes, healing arts, new age–adjacent ideals, environmentalism, and the quest for love, compassion, and sanity in a world gone/going awry. One unique piece of this festival puzzle involved “Microshort” films, 90 seconds or less, of which 90 were submitted, 57 chosen, and 20 finalists vying for prizes on the final evening (the winner was “My World”). The theme: “Oneness of Humanity, Love, Kindness, and Joy.” Cynicism or dramatic conflict were checked at the door.

The Brothers Koren at Illuminate Film Festival 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

For some, the ambiguous conceptual recipe of the festival and the “movement” it is part of might smack of “woo woo” qualities. Yes, the general vibe of the festival leans into the realm of “feelgood” culture and soft-edged cinematic values, but the festival fare also promoted a notion of “feel conscious” sensibility, touching on ecological peril and the dangers of an info-glutted, hyperactive, and anxiety-wracked age.

That wary optimism and balance of hope and forewarning was embedded in the opening film Wisdom of Happiness, based on an inspired contemporary interview with his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and a Koyaanisqatsi-like filmic mode.

Opening night also included a keynote speech by Oprah-approved author and motivational speaker Lynne Twist, who asserted that “pain pushes, until vision pulls … fear is not the opposite of love, it’s the lack of it.” Also on the evening’s roster, Ed Begley Jr. presented the Illuminate Media Change-Maker Award to famed oceanographer and activist Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Illuminate Festival could just as easily be called a documentary festival, given its docs, on a variety of subjects. The Dalai Lama returned to the spotlight in The Dalai Lama’s Gift, chronicling his first appearance in the United States, presiding over the Kalachakra initiation ritual outside of Madison, Wisconsin in 1981. Fool’s Paradise (Lost?) deals with the effort to revitalize and reconnect with nature through several different personal stories — including director Alexandra Lexton’s own apple farm/meditation zone project. Enchanted Matter: The Art of Robert Powell, directed by Tom Piozet and Andrei Jewell (which also screened at this year’s SBIFF), tells the exotic and visually radiant tale of Australian-born, long Katmandu-based and Far East–magnetized artist specializing in fastidious, ravishing architectural paintings.

A double-header on Saturday afternoon opened with the realism of Lowell Blank’s Suffering into Gold, an engaging short about near death experience and an ALS-afflicted subject’s decision to end his life with medically assisted suicide, and the peaceful resignation of he and his wife. “You can welcome it like a friend,” she says, in the end. Wolf’s Message, about a medium’s connection and message from “beyond the veil” with a young man struck dead by lightning, unfolds like a peaceable variation on the production aesthetic of true crime shows, and may cross the line into “woo woo” land for skeptics.

The best film of the festival, in my view, is Jeremy Power Regimbal’s Between the Mountain and the Sky, an inspirational true life tale of a young woman (and Regimbal’s wife), Maggie Doyne, who extended her gap year trip to Nepal into a lifelong mission of tending an orphanage there. She has remained true to her mission despite having received accolades and media attention for her efforts — including receiving a Movie of the Year award from the festival’s primary sponsor Holomovement and accepting via video from Nepal.

Maggie Doyne accepting her award at Illuminate Film Festival 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

The film navigates an ebb and flow of dramatic narrative arc and manages to juggle emotionality and sentimentality in a way not always achieved in the films seen here. Aaron Martin and Dag Rosenqvist’s musical score, mostly written for cello and piano, may have been the finest score of the festival, partly because of its spareness, compared to the overbearing, wall-to-wall scoring for many of the other docs.

On a related note, this was a film festival framed by live musical performances. Opening night kicked off with musical mantra-maker and pop singer Donna De Lory and the rainbow color-clad LUME Apex Dance Troupe. Closing night ended with the Brothers Koren — Isaac and Thorald — based in Ojai, subject of the film The Journey, in its world premiere. Post-screening, the naturally talented brothers sang an autobiographical song “Long Way Home” and then literally created a new song in 15 minutes, coaxing lyrics and melodic lines from the crowd.

Donna De Lory and LUME Apex Troupe perform at Illuminate Film Festival 2025 | Photo: Josef Woodard

Voila; the festival closed with a freshly-baked new anthem, its catchy chorus based on festival branding — “Looking through the lens of love … Illuminate, illuminate.” Call it spontaneous creative combustion, by committee.

Though the formal festival ended this weekend, the Virtual Illuminate Film Festival has films currently screening through Sunday, May 11. See illuminatefilmfestival.com/virtual-festival for details.