Roger Durling: if you build it they will come.

For the past ten days the Santa Barbara Film Festival has featured some for the most critically acclaimed and avant- guard films of the last year. Additionally the festival sponsors incredible panels with noted writers, directors as well as numerous celebrity tributes. However, for me ,the highlight of these events was having the opportunity to talk to the director of the Santa Barbara Film Festival, Roger Durling. Roger is modest and self- effacing, but one thing no one will deny is his complete transformation of the Santa Barbara Film Festival from lackluster to one the fifty top film festivals in the world.

I first met Roger when he moved to Santa Barbara and opened up a small coffee shop in Summerland. I would see him on the average of three times a week, and he was always talking about movies. We would share with each other our short list of must see films, some classics and some obscure films that premiered at the Dodge City Film Festival. Roger’s openness while speaking to our class, put us all at ease. I especially liked when he told us how he reinvents himself by changing his color. The last time I saw him it was bright orange. What I loved about what he shared with our class is that this metamorphose gives him the confidence to be noticed. Javier Bardem spoke about the same process in his interview for the Montecito award . He spoke about the process of building a character. And how something like costume or physical appearance helps him build his characters. For example, Bardem spoke about his hairstyle in creating the character of Anton his most recent film, No Country for Old Men.

Roger also spoke about how each festival as an “identity.” Since Roger has taken over as director of the S.B. Film Festival it has become known as the festival that has an uncanny ability to predict the Academy Award winners. When Roger took over as director, he basically rebuilt the festival from scratch. He changed everything from the date the festival takes place ( it over laps with Sundance, the Sag Awards and the Golden Globes) to the kinds of films that are shown. In essence Roger followed the famous line from Field of Dreams: ” If you build it they will come.” And come they certainly have.