The Santa Barbara Surf Film Festival moves into the city’s Funk Zone on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 13 and 14, with films about board shaping, cold-water surfing and a trip through Patagonia. The festival’s neighborhood lineup lists separate venues for the weekend. The Santa Barbara Independent reported that those events are free and unticketed. Thursday’s Arlington Theatre ticket was for the opening-day program.
Friday at The Base
The festival program puts Friday’s 6 p.m. screenings at The Base, 122 Gray Ave. In Once Upon a Toothpick, filmmaker Samuel Fairbank and board shaper Tom Wegener follow a young surfer trying a miniature version of a long, narrow wooden board. Entrada shifts to skateboarding. Brett P. Schreckengost follows brothers Ollie and Tristan Graves from their backyard ramp in Colorado to sandstone terrain in the Southwest.
The two shorts share a start time. The program does not list an individual slot for either film.
Saturday screenings by venue
- 4:30 p.m., Mollusk Surf Shop, 208 Gray Ave. Beyond Borders Patagonia follows filmmaker and surfer Jed Fasso and a crew of surfers and snowboarders in Chile. The shop operates in a former surfboard factory and has an outdoor area for screenings. The film’s official site has the trailer.
- 5:30 p.m., High Seas Mead, 210 Gray Ave. Hayden Lane’s Coast Lines follows surfers, anglers and divers along the Pacific coast from Southern California to Magdalena Bay.
- 6 p.m., The Base, 122 Gray Ave. Cold Water Sirens follows women surfing in northern Denmark. Learning to Fly turns to a group of surfers learning a new board discipline, and Duet follows longboard champion Soleil Errico and dancer Kelsey Boyle as they try each other’s disciplines.
- 7:30 p.m., Topa Topa, 120 Santa Barbara St. The evening block pairs the surf comedy Salty with Infinite Difference, a film about Australian surfer Brenden Margieson, and Maps to Nowhere, a Surfline project about finding remote waves.
Mollusk and High Seas Mead sit next door to each other on Gray Avenue. Their published start times are an hour apart, and the organizer’s program gives no end times. If you have a film you especially want to see, plan around that start time. Check the organizer’s lineup for changes before you head to the neighborhood.
This is the festival’s sixth edition. Its Thursday program honored Santa Barbara native and world champion Tom Curren. The festival lists Heal the Ocean, the local Surfrider Foundation chapter and the Surf Happens Foundation as the three nonprofits it supports.
