The 39th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival wrapped up Saturday with the last panel of the festival and the one its executive director Roger Durling called his favorite.
 
The Women’s Panel featured a power pack of Oscar-nominated females from all corners of film, and included Maite Alberdi, director/producer, “The Eternal Memory”; Karen Hartley-Thomas, hair and make-up, “Golda”; Laura Karpman, composer, “American Fiction”; Diane Warren, songwriter, “Flamin’ Hot”; and Julie Zachary, PGA and head of production at Annapurna Animation, “Nimona.”
 
The panel, moderated by Madelyn Hammond, allowed each woman to introduce her film and discuss everything from her inspiration to the worst advice she ever got to exactly where she was when she received news of her Academy Award nomination.
 
Laura Karpman
 
The Julliard-trained Karpman has received five Emmys for her work, spanning film, television, video games, theater and opera. She is only the sixth female nominee in her category, and if she wins, she would be the first American woman to win best score since the Academy’s inception 89 years ago.

Talking about the representation of women in the composing world, and more specifically the percentage of women represented in the top films of the year, Karpman noted that, “In 2014, it was 2% of the top 250 box office films. Now, 10 years later, we have advanced, we had 14%. But people, 50/50 by 2030. Enough with incremental change. It’s time to go for it.”
 
Regarding the score in “American Fiction,” Karpman said, “They were looking for people who were well-versed in jazz and people who had a tremendous amount of experience in film scoring … I grew up playing jazz and classical music, I learned them almost simultaneously, so for me, they’ve always been present in my work, even if it’s not as evident as it is here.”
 
Karpman shared that she still can’t believe she received an Oscar nod: “I just never thought it would happen; it was something I dreamed for so long that I literally think I stopped myself from dreaming it.”
 
Karen Hartley-Thomas

Thomas is responsible for the dramatic transformation of Dame Helen Mirren into the Iron Lady of Israel, Golda Meir. From prosthetic nose, cheeks and eyebags to eyebrows, contact lens and nicotine-stained teeth, the Hollywood icon would spend 2 ½ hours in the hair-and-make-up chair each day to become Golda.
 
Thomas said she hit the ground running, with just six weeks to prepare. Although she hesitated to join the film with such little advance notice, she had recently worked with Mirren on another project which led to her accepting the job.
 
“Golda is an iconic woman, and Helen is iconic, and you don’t want to do (the job) badly,” she said. “I didn’t want to just transpose the face of Golda onto Helen, as I wanted to retain the greatness of the actress herself, so instead I went for the essence of Golda.”
 
Maite Alberdi

Alberdi, the first Chilean woman ever nominated for an Oscar, documented the love story of prominent Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora and Chilean actress and first minister of culture Paulina Urrutia, as the couple navigates Augusto’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
 
Alberdi describes the film as “a quintessential love story.”
 
“I thought I was making a film about what people forget but in the end it’s a film about what we always remember,” she said.
 
Alberdi was teaching at the university where Paulina worked when she noticed Paulina bringing Augusto to work with her and integrating him into her day.

“It was unbelievable; they seemed very happy together being a couple in that context and it was the first time that I saw a person with dementia not isolated, not alone, and neither was his caregiver. For me it was the best example of how we have to deal with people with Alzheimers.”
 
“We are sold this fiction that Alzheimer’s is always a tragedy and terrible, but they are the perfect example that we all will pass but it’s the way that you live that can make all the difference.”
 
Julie Zachary
 
Zachary described her film “Nimona,” as a love letter to anyone who has felt “othered.”
 
She said she wanted Nimona’s world to be authentic and “reflect the world that we live in.” Therefore, there are females who are knights and LGBTQ+ themes that were seamlessly integrated into the film.
 
“The gay themes were always part of the story,” said Zachary. “We received many notes along the way to ‘talk about the gay thing’ or to take it out, which we were never going to do.”
 
On writer ND Stevenson’s feelings about the film, Zachary said, “At the end of the day, when we showed him our final version, we screened it in Burbank, he turned around and said ‘You guys made the movie I didn’t even realize I was trying to tell 10 years ago.’”
 
On her new role as an executive at Annapurna, Zachary shared, “I want to tell the stories and I want the voices of the people around me to be heard.  I am there to support, to understand and to help develop other peoples’ vision, not just my own.”
 
Diane Warren
 
Award-winning songwriter Diane Warren said the “Flamin’ Hot” story resonated with her, as it’s a true story about someone who came from nothing but had a dream, and pursued that dream despite naysayers.
 
“As I was watching the movie, I was going ‘I’m Richard Montañez, ’” she said of the main character.
 
Warren, who said she’s always writing in her heard, got the title to the song first – “The Fire Inside.”

“The fire inside is about passion, about when you have that fire in your belly that makes you feel like you can do anything. People can slam doors in your face, but the fire inside burns all of them down.”
 
“It’s not about money for me, it never was,” said Warren on how she decides to take on a project. “If I feel like I can do something great for it, if I can get inspired by it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a documentary or a big movie, if I think I can do something big for it great, I’ll do it.”