Phyllis de Picciotto, who based the Santa Barbara Worldwide Movie Pageant, has died. She was 88.
Daughter Lionie de Picciotto mentioned her mom died April 14 however didn’t present different particulars.
After spending her early childhood in Chicago, de Picciotto and her household moved to L.A. She graduated from Fairfax Excessive College and attended Northwestern and later UCLA.
After befriending Robert Laemmle, whose household owned the Laemmle Theaters chain, she discovered work with the arthouse exhibitor. As soon as she began forming connections with filmmakers, critics and others within the specialty movie world, de Picciotto persuaded the Laemmles to again her plan to indicate a sequence of movies over a number of weeks with visitor speaker Q&As afterward.
The shingle shaped because of that initiative, Phyllis de Picciotto Presents, grew to become a recognized commodity on the arthouse circuit. Distributors and different specialty exhibitors employed her firm to assist promote movies and de Picciotto labored at and attended movie festivals around the globe.
The seeds for Santa Barbara’s fest had been planted throughout these years working within the L.A. specialty enterprise. After transferring up the coast from L.A. within the Eighties, de Picciotto set about realizing her imaginative and prescient of making a world-class movie pageant. Native enterprise and civic leaders noticed the potential, with tourism a key profit, they usually signed on to the plan. The primary version of the pageant was held in 1986. Held every February, it quickly grew to become a key cease on the Oscar circuit.
“Though there have been clashes with ‘specialists’ over her imaginative and prescient, Phyllis by no means wavered,” recalled her husband, Stan Roden. “She watched each movie submitted for consideration; no element was too small. SBIFF shifted from a 3-day to the present 11-day format a couple of years after it began.”
Phyllis de Piccioto is survived by Roden; daughters Leonie de Picciotto and Natalie de Picciotto; stepsons Grant Roden and BJ Roden; sister Linda Goldsman; and grandchildren Sarah Rose, Jack Rose, Isabella Hardy, Jet Hardy, Lucas Roden, Griffin Roden, and Giselle Roden.
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