After an agonizing period of delay and indecision about the timing of the event, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival is back. Beginning on Wednesday, March 31, and extending through Saturday, April 10, the SBIFF will be offering a remarkably intact slate of films, panels, talks, and tributes, primarily through an online ticketing and viewing system that may well have the paradoxical effect of making this year’s programming accessible to more people than ever before. Not content to follow Sundance, which went totally virtual this season, the SBIFF will also feature safe, socially distanced film viewing at two purpose-built drive-in theaters located in the waterfront parking lots owned by Santa Barbara City College across from Leadbetter Beach. These facilities, which can hold 50 cars each, will be outfitted with state-of-the-art LED screens capable of showing films in daylight, something that few filmgoers anywhere will have ever experienced.
Last week, I connected over Zoom with Roger Durling, the festival’s charismatic executive director, and Claire Waterhouse, education coordinator, for a lively conversation about what to expect and how this unusual edition of the festival came to be. What follows is a small sample of the talk, lightly edited and significantly condensed.