By Vic Cox

	UCSB faculty member Cristina Venegas organized Latino films for the local festival.

UC Santa Barbara’s presence at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival continues to grow, with at least four projects from different faculty members—including the third annual Santa Barbara Latino CineMedia fest—scheduled to show this year during the Feb. 2-12 event.

“The Power of the Sun,” the saga of solar energy produced by Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn, with advice from fellow physicist and Nobelist Alan Heeger and others, has its first festival showing on Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. in the Marjorie Luke Theatre at Santa Barbara Junior High School. A second screening is set for Feb. 7 at 3:30 p.m. in Victoria Hall.

Sociologist Kum-Kum Bhavnani produced and directed “The Shape of Water,” a sweeping but intimate exploration of how visionary women in four developing nations are confronting destructive development with innovative change. It will be screened on Feb. 6 at 6:30 p.m. in Victoria Hall, and then again on Feb. 9 at 1 p.m. in the Paseo Nuevo’s Center Stage Theater.

“Video Portraits of Survival,” a UCSB film studies class project that focuses on Holocaust survivors from the Santa Barbara area, was coproduced by Kwame Braun and Janet Walker—he’s a lecturer and she chairs the Film Studies Department. The six short videos will run only once, on Feb. 7 at 6:30 p.m. in the Luke Theatre.

For details on these offerings go to the SBIFF Web site <www.sbfilmfestival.org>. Check it for changes in times and venues.

One “sidebar” of the international film festival is the score of films to be shown under the umbrella of the Latino CineMedia Festival, which for the third year has been organized by Cristina Venegas, assistant professor of film studies. Films from Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Spain, and other nations will begin to screen on Feb. 3.

Venegas has made a point of highlighting American Indian or indigenous filmmakers. Only the Youth CineMedia films on Feb. 4 at 12:30 p.m. in Victoria Hall are free of charge. Go to <www.sblatinofilm.com> for updates and ticket prices.

One of CineMedia’s highlights is the screening of “Soy Cuba” (“I Am Cuba”) on Feb. 5, a 1964 Cuban-Soviet documentary Venegas calls “the legendary Cold War-era masterpiece that transcends time and politics.” It opens at 2 p.m. at the Lobero Theatre and is shown back-to-back with Brazilian director Vicente Ferraz’s 2004 documentary about why “Soy Cuba” met widespread rejection in Cuba and the Soviet Union.