Talk with Roger Durling

Reviewed by Jacob Wirsenius, viewed at the UGG Pavilion at the Santa Barbara international film festival.

We got the chance to talk with the director of the film festival, Roger Durling. Roger is born and raised in Panama and went to filmschool in New York. His passion at first was to be a play write so he moved to Los Angeles. After some years with not so much success he moved to Santa Barbara and opened a French Café and had great success with it. His passion for film was still there though and he went around to as many Film Festivals as he could. After going to so many festivals he knew everything there was to know about film festivals. He noticed that the festival didn’t go that well so he said that he could take over the festival for the next year and work for free and if it went well he would then get paid. It became a success and he has now been the director for 12 years.

Last year 17,000 people attended the festival and this year is the best year so far. Every tribute was sold out and there’s never been so many people attending all the different movies. He talked about the the website called “without a box where filmmakers can submit there movies and hopefully be chosen to the festival. There are of course a lot of international films screening during the festival and Roger told us he travel to a lot of countries over the year to look at films to screen on the festival. Rogers favorite film this year is “Queens and cowboys which is also nominated for an Oscar. He talked about the importance of having a gimmick for the festival to stand out. Roger changed the dates of the the festival so it would be between the Oscar nominations and the Academy awards. This turned the Santa Barbara international film festival in to the “Oscars film festival”.

The festival have a seven people staff all year and 4 of them are programmers, Roger is looking to hire one more. The programmers are the one who is responsible for picking all the movies that will be shown on the festival. He also talked about the business side of the film industry. Roger always have a three or a five year plan that he works towards to make the festival even better. Roger took business classes and his advice to us students was that everybody should at least take some business classes of we want to succeed in the film industry. The festival has a budget on 3 million dollars and most of the money comes from sponsors, that is a very important part of running a festival, to get sponsors. Roger is really passioned about film and has always been, he sees at least two film a day, every day.

This was my favorite talk, it was interesting hearing how he got where he is today and I was really fascinated how he got the job as the Director. I will defiantly start going to as many film festival I can.