Of the many documentaries being screened at this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival, acclaimed director Andrew Davis’s Mentors: Tony & Santi wins extra points for multi-layered context and concept. At its center is the friendship — and mentor-protégé relationship — of two prominent photographers, Santi Visalli (87, and a Santa Barbara resident) and Tony Vaccaro (97). Their decades of important work — from WWII forward — producing iconic imagery for Look, Life, and other outlets are treasure troves, visually capturing history and humanity.
Via the handiwork of Davis and his producer/editor/co-cinematographer Ethan Boehme, Mentors blends magnetic scenes of the two legendary veterans reminiscing, waxing philosophical about photography, swapping Sophia Loren stories, cutting each other’s hair, and cooking with a hypnotic cavalcade of striking images from their archives.
Before our eyes, in rapid montage succession, we’re fed shots of JFK, a young Robert De Niro, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Beatles, Alexander Calder, Marlon Brando, Lauren Bacall, Federico Fellini, Lina Wertmüller, Marcel Marceau, and countless other subjects, alongside artful visions of urban environs, life during and after (and between) wartime, and much more. It all adds up to an experience of concentrated time travel, counterbalanced by the affable here-and-now rapport Visalli and Vaccaro share in a room together.
Davis, a noted feature film director whose credits includes The Fugitive, Holes, The Package, the Santa Barbara–based Steal Big, Steal Little, and numerous thinking person’s thriller/action films, brings a deft touch to Mentors. Last week, we met for a breakfast interview at his Riviera home, which affords dazzling views of the mountains and the Pacific. He humbly considered the views and grinned, “Not bad for a Chicago kid who grew up by the steel mills.”