Santa Barbara film festival goes for the exotic

There will be glitz and glamour, as well as world and North American premieres, at the 24th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which opens this evening with Rod Lurie’s political drama “Nothing but the Truth.”

The festival has also become known for featuring Spanish and Latin American cinema, movies from Eastern Europe, Asian, extreme sports and nature films. This year is no exception.

“I wanted this film festival to be a reflection of Santa Barbara itself,” says executive director Roger Durling, who is celebrating his sixth year with the festival.

The festival, which screens at the Arlington and Lobero theaters in downtown Santa Barbara, will feature 200 movies, including 20 world premieres. David Fincher is this year’s guest director, and several other Oscar contenders -- including Kate Winslet and Clint Eastwood -- will be honored throughout the festival, which concludes Feb. 1.

Durling says the beach community’s large surfing population was also taken into account when programming the festival. “What is incredible about surf films is that it brings into the festival not your typical festival-goer,” he explains. “With nature films -- there is a big environmental movement here in Santa Barbara.”

Durling asked filmmaker and surfer Russ Spencer to program the extreme sports section. This year’s offering includes 10 features plus three shorts -- six of the 13 total are surfing films.

“It feels really good to be serving an audience that is hungry for these films,” Spencer adds. “Surfers are a very strong and inward-looking subculture, and if you show a surf film they will come.”

Tim Matheson, best known as Otter in “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” and nature cinematographer Mike deGruy have been programming the Asian and nature films for the last five years. “I used to own a cafe in Summerland called the French Bulldog,” says Durling. Matheson and DeGruy would hang out there and talk films. “When I took over the film festival,” Durling says, “I called upon them and said, ‘Here is your chance to curate a program.’ ”

Matheson, a Santa Barbara resident, has been a fan of Asian cinema since he was a youngster. “I grew up with Toho La Brea [movie theater] and I had a Japanese girlfriend,” he says. “I was interested in Kurosawa.” He’s programmed 10 films from Asia this year, including anime, sci-fi, horror, action and a period epic called “The Divine Weapon” from South Korea.

DeGruy’s selection of nature films shows the same kind of diversity. “I stay away from the Discovery ‘Shark Week’ gnashing shows and trying to tell entertaining stories about the natural world,” he says.

This year, DeGruy scored a coup getting noted nature filmmakers Derek and Beverly Joubert to fly in from Botswana for their new film, “The Eye of the Leopard,” in which the couple followed a baby leopard for three years. “It’s an elegant program,” he says.

For more information go to www.sbfilmfestival.org.

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susan.king@latimes.com