Jon Fitzgerald has been named executive director of The Santa Barbara International Film Festival after stints as director of both the Slamdance and AFI Los Angeles International film festivals.

Fitzgerald will be working closely with incoming board president Arnold Kossoy. His duties include artistic direction, programming, development, marketing and overall festival management.

He is founder of the independent production company Marine Street Films and prior to that launched was vice president, programming for IFILM.com. He was at AFI from 1997 to 1999 and was executive director of Slamdance from 1996 to 1997, an event he co-founded with Shane Kuhn and Dan Mirvish.

Next year's Santa Barbara film festival will take place Feb 28 to March 9, 2003.