INDOMITABLE

Doug Mustin St. Denis ’55 has led her life with determination, resilience, and creativity, and she’s still going strong!

BY TAYLOR KILAND ’85
Above photo by Jamie Howren ’85

In spring of 2020, as the world shut down, the Coronado Island Film Festival was faced with a dilemma. Should they go dark? With four years of experience, the nascent film festival was building an audience and a reputation as a walkable, friendly, intimate venue for both established and student filmmakers to showcase their work.

The organizers had spent two years laying the groundwork, planning and hustling before the first festival debuted in 2016 in the small community of Coronado, California—home to some 18,000 residents, pristine beaches, and year-round perfect weather.

But the global pandemic threw the fledgling organization into a crisis. And its founder, Douglas “Doug” Mustin St. Denis ’55, had to decide. “Doug dug in her heels during COVID,” the festival’s chief executive officer and artistic director Merridee Book insists. “She was adamant that we needed to continue.” The fledgling festival simply could not afford to go dark for a year. Several board members disagreed with her. They were unsure how to navigate such an uncharted path.

With Doug’s guidance, CIFF pivoted to Zoom and even rented out a drive-in movie theater to screen some of the films in person—with “pods” arriving in their cars and taking isolated photos on a lonely red carpet. The attendance numbers were, expectedly, smaller than in previous years, but Doug proved to the community and to the industry that it was possible. And the young festival earned respect for its tenacity and dedication to providing filmmakers a platform—in good times and bad. In 2021, they did it again: CIFF was one of only a few festivals that opened in person.

At the same time, the city’s vintage Art Deco-style movie theater, built in 1947 and designed by noted theater interior designer Joseph Musil, had just reopened after being abandoned for a decade and a lengthy renovation. And the school district had launched the Coronado School for the Performing Arts in the 1990s, a school within a school with a mission to cultivate local talent in painting, sculpting, acting, designing, and filmmaking.

The confluence of all these initiatives was fortuitous. As Doug recalls, “And I thought to myself, ‘We need a film festival here.’” Doug repeatedly spoke up at the Cultural Arts Commission meetings, making her case: “My gosh, you guys, the time is right for a film festival in this town.”

She called Coronado’s mayor and the city manager to garner their support. They encouraged Doug and the mayor told her, “Go for it. It’s meant to be here.” Why? Because Coronado’s ties to Hollywood date back to the origins of the industry itself. Many island visitors learn that Marilyn Monroe’s “Some Like It Hot” was filmed on the island at the iconic Hotel del Coronado, but most do not know that Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Frank Capra, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Olivia De Havilland all filmed movies on the island in the early twentieth century. (Scenes from “Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick” also featured the island.) And Coronado was also the home to a short-lived film studio, the Lubin Film Studio, a Philadelphia-based global silent movie empire. Siegmund “Pop” Lubin made 50 films on the island until he shuttered his studio there in 1916.

Determined to get a film festival established, Doug set out to start a non-profit, something she had never attempted. But she tapped into her network, recruiting friends with legal and finance experience to help her incorporate the Coronado Island Film Festival as a charitable corporation. The state government bureaucracy proved vexing enough to require the intervention of her congressman. She personally lobbied him.

Doug with Academy Award winner French Composer Alexandré Desplat [Courtesy of CIFF] and Academy Award winner and legendary cinematographer Dean Cundey [Amanda SanMartin Photography]

She recruited a board of directors, made up of local residents with banking, education, non-profit, and film industry experience—all of whom could advise Doug as she applied for community grants, filed the legal documents, and planned the launch. With two children working as senior marketing executives in Hollywood, she was able to make some critical contacts with studios and filmmakers. And one meeting with the Hotel del Coronado’s general manager secured the festival’s first corporate sponsor.

Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin, a friend of a friend, signed up to be the festival’s first host (and he has remained in this role ever since). This gave the brand-new festival some instant industry credibility. And Doug was insistent that the festival include a professionally juried competition, starting in year one.

“We were told that it would take three years to get a studio film or a name actor,” Doug admits. “We did it our first year.”

Doug conceived and created CIFF at age 77. Now, at age 87, she is still serving as chair of the festival’s board of directors. At an age when many of her peers are retired, Doug is still working and creating. And this is a pattern for her. After a long career as a print and advertising model in Los Angeles, she earned a college degree and became an architect at age 56, the same year she became a grandmother. She was the oldest student at the school. Inspired by her husband Dale St. Denis, who was a well-known architect in southern California, Doug graduated with honors and went to work with him.

“I’ve always known the power of art and the power of film, but the power of architecture just thrilled me.” Together, Doug and Dale designed and redesigned many homes in San Diego and Coronado. Doug also served as a commissioner on the city’s Design Review Commission and its Planning Commission before she joined the newly formed Cultural Arts Commission in 2011. And it was in this role where she conceived the film festival, which has now become a sought-after venue for studios, screenwriters, filmmakers, and actors.

The 2024 San Diego premieres and first screenings included “A Real Pain,” “FLOW,” “Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “Sugarcane,” “Sing Sing,” “Unstoppable,” and “Marcella.” In 2023, the festival premiered “Past Lives,” “Fallen Leaves,” “May December,” “Maxine’s Baby,” “Shayda,” “Common Ground,” “Deep Rising,” “Robot Dreams,” “Eileen,” and “Taste of Things.” And in 2022, they screened “Empire of Light,” “She Said” (2022 CIFF Audience winner), “Women Talking,” “The Inspection,” “Corsage,” “C’mon C’mon,” “King Richard,” “Julia,” “7 Days,” “PIG,” “Nomadland,” “JoJo Rabbit,” “Marriage Story,” “Clemency,” “A Hidden Life,” “The Finest Hours,” “Darkest Hour,” “Green Book,” “ROMA,” “The Favourite,” “Dealing with Dad,” “One Child Nation,” “The Donut King,” “Kiss the Ground,” “The Capote Tapes,” “Billie” and “River.”

Their short film exhibition is hosted by the Hotel del Coronado and the annual line up of documentary, animation, narrative, and international “shorts” has become a festival within a festival. Past highlights include: “Wander to Wonder,” “The Masterpiece,” “The Last Repair Shop” (Oscar Winner, CIFF Jury Winner Best Doc), “Stranger at the Gate,” “Steak,” “Nuisance Bear” (Oscar-shortlisted), “Bus Girl” (BAFTA-nominated, CIFF 2022 Jury Winner), “The Queen of Basketball” (Oscar Winner), “The Criminals” (Oscar-shortlisted), “Nefta Football Club” (Oscar-nominated Live Action short), and “The Neighbors’ Window” (Oscar Winner).

In 2024, CIFF launched a screenwriting competition to support writers, and the event includes a “pitch” workshop, industry panel discussions, and awards to feature and limited series scripts.

In a tribute to her late husband, Doug underwrites cash awards at the festival with the Dale St. Denis Female Filmmaker Awards, honoring outstanding female filmmakers and screenwriters. 

Doug discovered her love of visual and performing arts during her high school days at St. Agnes. While the rest of her family was pursuing careers in the Navy (she grew up in the Mustin family—five generations of naval officers and two Navy destroyers named for them), she became fluent in French, thanks in part to Mademoiselle Marie-Antoinette Michalot, and she developed a love of literature and writing, courtesy of her English and fine arts teachers, Mrs. Beatrice Van Sant and Mrs. Paul Johnson. Mrs. Van Sant encouraged her: “Doug, you’re a writer. In your soul, you’re a writer. You’ve got to keep at this.” And she was hooked, falling in love with the arts: writing poetry, painting, ballet, acting. She took ballet classes at St. Agnes and participated in all the school’s plays. “My family did not quite know what to do with me,” Doug admits. “But they would come to my performances and plays.”

When the Navy transferred her father back to Coronado, she stayed behind for her senior year at St. Agnes and became a boarder—living on the third floor of Lloyd House. “Those St. Agnes years were really formative for me.” The first-rate education gave her a sense of confidence in her talents and abilities. “I just felt like I had the best foundation for life.”

And even though she dropped out of college to marry and start a family at age 17, she continued her pursuit of a career in the arts. Doug has never been deterred by the odds against her. As Merridee Book describes her, “Doug is a dreamer, but she is a realist when it comes to execution.” Her elevation of the arts in the public domain on this iconic island community is her legacy.

Someone asked Doug what her original vision was for the Coronado Island Film Festival. “And I said, ‘I can just picture it: the whole community getting behind it. And then we invite people from all over the world who are makers and lovers of film. And they come to Coronado and we all are part of it.’” And that is what she did.