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With so many films to choose from at SBIFF, along with the panels and tributes which are always my favorites, I’ve been focusing my energies mostly on trying to see as many Santa Barbara filmmakers’ efforts as I can.
One of the highlights so far has been Relatively Normal, written and directed by Amy Wendel, with some very well known locals in the cast, including Pamela Dillman, as the tightly wound mother to a 16-year- old and a college student forced back home during the COVID pandemic; and comedy writer Cheri Steinkellner as the very funny grandma Mimi. Set in Los Angeles but filmed primarily in Santa Barbara, the heart of the story lies on the shoulders of Chloe Coleman as the teen who is the story’s focus, and she is as real and relatable as it gets.
While there are plenty of laughs, this is not always an easy story of family and outside real-world tensions. But it’s a relatable story and a small but important one which captures a unique moment in our history from one family’s experience.
The Santa Barbara Narrative Shorts block was a particularly strong one this year. Directed by Emelie Claxton, The Crash Out really captured the family dynamics of how well sisters are able to simultaneously admire, love, and support each other while despising and pushing each other’s buttons with an intensity that knows no bounds.
On the sillier side, Robert Redfield’s Committee Animal is an aesthetically spot-on take on what it would be like to create some of our planet’s creatures with a team of designers. Among the actors on that team is Leslie Zemeckis, who also appears briefly in son Rhys Zemeckis’s (a USC student) clever Nuns with Guns, about three nuns who take matters into their own hands when they find out their church is being repossessed, so they need to get money fast!
My Type, whose producer sisters Nicole MacNaughton and Kimberly Danek Pinkson I interviewed a while back, is a sweet romantic comedy about a young couple who meet through a diabetes support group. Also intriguing is Ralph Torrefranca’s Fil-Am about the life of a 16-year-old Filipino kid forced to leave the life he knows and move to Santa Barbara.
Kerrilee Gore has both a short — Memory Experiment — and a feature — Stand By, Mother — in the festival this year. The second one is my watch list for Friday, in part because the first one has one of the most interesting film concepts I’ve seen, which is the idea of memory and trauma (in this case a violent carjacking and kidnapping) how much two eyewitnesses’ accounts of an incident can vary.
The short (4 minutes) but so very sweet film A Sunday on the Moon by Trevor Silverstein is also a really interesting fresh concept, as the filmmaker travels a great distance to talk to his young nephew about space, birds, and other fascinating things.
Dale Griffith Stamos’s film Imbalance, starring Sharon Lawrence of NYPD Blue fame as a professor in the midst of a #MeToo conflict, has its premiere on Feb. 10, followed by a second screening on Feb. 12. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this one for a while, as Dale’s an excellent writer and a longtime teacher at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference.
The final locally connected feature, Eternal Stoke by Josh Pomer, had an earlier cut premiere at the Lobero last year, and the story of Santa Barbara surfer Chris Brown’s journey from prodigy to world-tour standout and urchin diver to an untimely death will certainly resonate with many in town. It screens on Feb. 11, 12, and 13.
Some of these films will likely get additional screenings in the TBD slots toward the end of the week. Check sbiff.org, the SBIFF app, or the signs outside of the Arlington Theatre and SBIFF McHurley Film Center for the latest schedules and additions.
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