Starting on Tuesday, February 4, and running for 12 days and nights, the much-anticipated Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) will take center stage on Santa Barbara’s cultural calendar. On the festival’s activity map this year, changing up a years-long routine, are the familiar starry tribute evenings at the Arlington Theatre and a vast program of screenings in the newly acquired multi-screen SBIFF Film Center (former site of the Fiesta 5) and new festival-timed use of the festival’s Riviera Theatre, the state-of-the-art arthouse with a view, far from the downtown thrum.
As a preliminary window on the grand 40th annual event, the ceremonial unveiling of plans — and this year’s official poster image — settled into the humbler but fitting venue of the prominent Sullivan Goss Gallery last week, when Executive Director Roger Durling led a gathering of press and other parties through a brief overview of what’s to come. The gallery setting was ideal, as the 2025 poster, a mythologically tinged and pink-hued image by well-established artist Mary Heebner, was doubly unveiled — both the poster form and its original collage piece currently hung on the gallery wall.
The press conference was postponed for a few days, in lieu of the unfolding tragedy of the Los Angeles wildfires, but a sizable group convened on Friday morning, including Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse.
As an introduction, Durling addressed the weighty subject on the collective mind, concerning the ongoing fire debacle down south. “As you can imagine,” he noted, “we’ve debated whether we should postpone the film festival. Should we change the dates? Should we cancel that work there? The answer was no. Art, for me, has always been a place of solace has always inspired me, in the darkest moments in life. Art has always been a beacon.”…