A meeting with Roger Durling, Director of the SBIFF 2008

I have lived in Santa Barbara for close to 10 years now and have been to two Santa Barbara Film Festivals. Last year there was a real buzz around the film festival and every year it seems to get bigger and better. After our Film Festival Studies class meeting with Roger Durling I understand why the Film Festival has gotten so much better.

Roger Durling seems to love what he does. He seemed to have a lot of passion for movies, and making sure that the Santa Barbara film festival is all that it can be. One thing I found interesting about Mr. Durling is that he came upon the job as Director at the SBIFF by accident. But maybe it was more of fate because his journey to becoming the Film Festival Director started with his love for films by always talking about films at the coffee shop he owned. In fact the first year he worked on the film festival as the director he did it for free. If this isn’t a symbol of a person who truly loves what they do I don’t know what is.

Durlings success is now internationally recognized and Canes the Grand Daddy Film Festival of them all invited Roger to work as the programming director of the American Pavilion. Roger also has a SBIFF Blog that he updates regularly. It is fairly interesting and he shares his thoughts on past and future of the Film Festival. If you check his Blog out today he has just posted a schedule of which movies will be playing again this weekend at the Riviera Theatre.