Avid and/or addictive film festivalgoers in Santa Barbara have been duly trained, and possibly spoiled, by living in a city with a world-class film festival. They also know the inherent bittersweet sensation when the annual winter Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) calls it a wrap. But booster shots of film fest lore and content have been popping up in public.
Thankfully, SBIFF has been making inroads to keeping its presence on the cultural calendar year-round, with Wednesday screenings at Plaza de Oro, special screenings and celebrity visitations in the Cinema Society series, the recent acquisition of the Riviera Theatre (see last week’s Santa Barbara Independent story ), and now the continuing saga of the mini-film festivals under the band The Wave Film Festival.
In its second year of operation, the Wave phenom — French and Latin and Spanish films last year, and this week’s Pan-Asia festival (running May 11-15), at the festival’s newly announced official theater home up at the Riviera — is one event in what may become a quarterly occasion. The Wave festival director, Mickey Duzdevich, also a senior programmer at SBIFF, asserted that in putting together the compact mini-fests, “we just try to find the best films possible — films that allow audience members to travel the world without leaving their own backyard," he said. We try to make sure there is something for everyone. We want action, drama, romance, comedy — anything else you can think of. “It’s hard to find 11 amazing films to group together, but as long as each audience member finds one film out of the group that they can’t get out of their head and want to talk about it, then it’s a job well done."