Santa Barbara Film Festival Enters 13th Year With New Leader

The 13th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival has survived a few tests of time. With the 1998 festival beginning tonight and running through March 15, it enters its teens with the requisite angst and high hopes in tow--as well as a new director.

Initially seeded with city money geared toward bolstering tourism in the off-season, the Santa Barbara festival has established itself as a respectable smorgasbord of foreign films, documentaries, shorts and U.S. features, with tributes to visiting actors and filmmakers.

But this year there’s been a change at the top, which is reshaping, or at least redefining the festival’s direction. Phyllis DePiccioto, the festival founder who has served as its artistic director, stepped down late last year. Replacing her is Renee Missell, a seasoned film producer and a Santa Barbara resident who has been active in setting up seminars for previous festivals. A film she produced, “Guy,” was one of the independent U.S. films on last year’s program.

This year, she becomes that rarity in the festival world--a filmmaker-turned-festival head. Since her appointment, Missell put her energy and Rolodex to work, coming up with one of the most promising programs in the festival’s history. Her main agenda was to streamline the programming and to tighten the quality control.

“At first I said, ‘If I have to show only 15 movies, I’ll only show 15 movies,’ ” Missell said. “I’d rather do that than show movies that I’m not proud of. I thought, at first, that there wouldn’t be any. I was scared.”

Such fears, as it turned out, were unfounded. The festival opens tonight with the Coen brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski” and closes 10 days later with the world premiere of Robert Towne’s new film about the late great runner Steve Prefontaine, “Without Limits.”

In between there are more than 80 films, in different genres and from different countries, including an emphasis on Spanish-language entries--a gesture intended as an outreach to the sizable Latino community in town. The list of world premieres ranges from the low-budget “Confessions of a Sexist Pig” to the high-profile “The Proposition,” with Kenneth Branagh, Madeleine Stowe and William Hurt. A new film from Chinese director and screenwriter Lu Wei, “The Journey to the Xia Empire,” is having its North American premiere.

On Saturday night, there will be a salute to Jodie Foster. A salute to the ‘70s that runs through the festival features a tribute to John Schlesinger, including a screening of “Midnight Cowboy”; a tribute to Julie Christie, with a screening of “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”; and a tribute to screenwriter Robert Towne, with a screening of “Chinatown.” Bob Hoskins will also be honored with a screening of his new film, “TwentyFourSeven.”

Also featured at the festival: seminars on female directors, screenwriting, editing, the press and such nuts-and-bolts topics as distribution, and international co-financing. In short, it’s a festival--like its predecessors--with a broad net.

“There’s a solid base here, and I want to build on that, give it a direction,” Missell said. “There are too many festivals all over the nation. If you don’t have a direction of some sort, you just get lost.”

Missell’s own background embodies the notion that producers are both born and made. A native Montrealer, Missell went to New York, became a photojournalist and then a documentary filmmaker, but Hollywood beckoned. She entered the film world through the gateway of B-film legend Roger Corman, and went on to produce such films as “Resurrection” and “Nell.”

She came to Hollywood during the ‘70s, the “golden age” the festival is toasting. Missell recalled: “It was fun, because then, Hollywood was like the wild west. You would walk down the halls of Universal and ask someone about an idea, and they’d say, ‘Go do it, develop it.’.”

While this is a new role for her, Missell brings some of her skills as a producer--grappling with a mix of creativity and logistics--to her new job. There are similarities and differences between the jobs, she said.

“In a way, you’re both producing it and directing it [the festival]. For me, it’s a welcome respite from the impotence you feel as a producer. This is like putting on a show and being left alone to do it, which is heaven on Earth, that part.

“You’re a distributor for 10 days. That’s fun, too, because you get a chance to show movies that might never get a chance at distribution. That feels really good. Also, there are no retakes. You can’t say, ‘Whoops, let’s reshoot tomorrow,’ if it falls apart, if it’s a fiasco. So it’s like theater, which I like, too.”

Missell envisions a bright future for the festival, with the proposed development of a film society in town and eventually a creative workshop/institute, akin to Sundance. She hopes that one day it can establish itself as an important date on the festival calendar between Sundance and Cannes.

But, for now, she’s just anxiously eyeing the results of her maiden voyage. “After this festival, I’m going to look at the demographics and just see what this year was all about, see who came,” she said. “It’s a work-in-progress. It’s in development, even though it shoots next week.”

BE THERE

13th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, today through March 15 at Fiesta Five Theater, Arlington Theater, Riviera Theater and Granada Theater. Seminars and workshops are at Center Stage Theater, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Riviera Theater. Seminars and tributes, $15-$20. Film tickets are $7.50, general, and $5 for students/seniors. Also available is the Eight Greats pass for $60, the full festival pass for $225 and the festival gold pass for $400. For information, call (805) 689-INFO; for tickets, call (805) 963-4408.