The third annual edition of the Santa Barbara Indie Film Fest hits our town September 19-21 at the small but atmospheric and historic Alhecama Theatre. Wisely, the festival — launched by locally grown filmmaker and cineaste Dave Haws — doesn’t officially use the boldly branded “SBIFF” (as in the venerable Santa Barbara International Film Festival) name as an acronym-moniker.
But Haws says his hope is that it can be considered an alternative or fringe festival to the SBIFF mothership, akin to the symbiotic relationship of the prominent Sundance festival to its grassroots upstart across town, the Slamdance festival. He sees the “dance” fests in Utah “as a model of how the two festivals can coexist.”
Speaking about the origins of his festival project, Haws says, “I wanted to create a smaller and more intimate film festival than the bigger festival (SBIFF) here in town. They have grown to be one of the top film festivals in the nation, if not the world, and I wanted to focus on truly independent, local, and youth filmmakers that might get lost in the shuffle of the bigger festivals, and I want to give them a platform to showcase their work.
