Hamptons Doc Fest announces an expanded, live, eight-day festival in this, its 14th year, with 30 screenings available at two venues in Sag Harbor, December 3-10.
Go to www.hamptonsdocfest.com for all passes and tickets, as no tickets will be sold at the Sag Harbor Cinema or Bay Street Theater this year.
LINE-UP OF THE 30 FILMS
Here’s the chronological line-up of the films at the two venues.
The Q&A host for many of the films at Sag Harbor Cinema will be Hamptons Doc Fest Advisory Board member and documentary filmmaker Roger Sherman, a founder of Florentine Films, who has earned two Academy Award nominations, an Emmy, a Peabody and a James Beard Award.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, SAG HARBOR CINEMA
7 p.m. Opening Night Film, “Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind” (94 min.)
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, SAG HARBOR CINEMA
12 p.m. “The Automat” (79 min.), directed by Lisa Hurwitz, features many famous Americans—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mel Brooks, Rob Reiner, Colin Powell, among others—who fondly reminisce about the impact the Horn & Hardart’s Automat chain of inexpensive meals in a commissary-style setting had on them and 20th century America. Post-film, Hurwitz will engage in a Q&A with Roger Sherman.
2:30 p.m. “Movie Man” (82 min.). The protagonist, Swedish filmmaker Stig Bjorkman, in this film directed by Stina Gardell, uses his time locked down in his Stockholm apartment during the COVID pandemic, to watch films from his decades-long film archive and to call friends and colleagues around the world, such as Isabella Rossellini, Alicia Vikander, Olivier Assayas and John Sayles, to name a few.
Roger Sherman will lead the Q&A afterwards with Bjorkman and director Gardell, that may possibly also include Rossellini.
5:00 p.m. “Citizen Ashe” (94 min.) Human Rights Award
9:00 p.m. Pennebaker Career Achievement Award to Dawn Porter; and 9:30 p.m.“Bree Wayy: Promise, Witness, Remembrance” (32 min.) and “Cirque du Soleil” (8 min. excerpt).
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5, SAG HARBOR CINEMA
2:00 p.m. “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” (93 min.) This film, directed by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri and produced by Stina Gardell, who will all participate in the post-film Q&A with Roger Sherman, is about Bjorn Andresen and the effects of fame thrust upon him when he appeared in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film “Death in Venice” (an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s classic novel) at the age of only 16.
5:00 p.m. “Bernstein’s Wall” (100 min.) Art & Inspiration Award
7:30 p.m. “Citizenfour” (114 min.) Producer Impact Award/Diane Weyermann Tribute
The Q&A host for films at Bay Street Theater will be Andrew Botsford, arts writer, actor/drama director, president of the Hampton Theater Company and former visiting professor in the graduate arts program at Stony Brook Southampton University.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, BAY STREET THEATER
5:00 “To Which We Belong” (89 min.) highlights farmers and ranchers leaving behind conventional practices that are no longer profitable and sustainable, to improve the health of our soil and sea, in order to save their livelihoods and our planet. Andrew Botsford will host both award-winning director and founder/CEO of Mystic Artists Film Productions Pamela Tanner Boll and Lindsay Richardson in the Q&A afterwards.
7:30 p.m. “A Reckoning in Boston” (83 min.) White suburban filmmaker James Rutenbeck documents students’ engagement in the humanities in a tuition-free course in Boston and is awakened to the violence, racism and gentrification that threatens characters Kafi’s and Carl’s place in the city, leading to surprising new places in life for all of them.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, BAY STREET THEATER
12:00 p.m. “Farming Long Island” (62 min.) In this film directed by Long Island filmmaker Dom Aprile, who will participate in a Q&A afterwards with Andrew Botsford, farmers praise the abundant sunshine, long growing season and the best soil in the world that exists on the East End. It also focuses on the challenges that farmers are facing today and the importance of supporting local industry and land conservation.
2:30 p.m. “Trapped” (81 min.) is directed by Dawn Porter, who is this year’s honoree of the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award. This film, which won the Special Jury Social Impact Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and a Peabody Award, to name just a few, interweaves the personal stories of those behind the regulatory battles for abortion rights—the physicians, the men and women who run the clinics, the lawyers leading the legal charge, and the women whom they are all determined to help.
5:00 p.m. “Try Harder” (85 min.) In this film directed by Debbie Lum, who frequently explores subject matter within the Asian or Asian-American community, the camera follows seniors at San Francisco’s Lowell High, one of the best public schools in the country, as the pressure intensifies to impress admissions officers at elite universities with their report cards, test scores and other accomplishments. Lum will engage in a Q&A with Andrew Botsford afterwards.
7:30 p.m. “After Antarctica” (105 min.) Environmental Award
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, BAY STREET THEATER
12:00 “GSW Gun Shot Wound” (63 min.) Directed by Jody Schiliro, this film explores the work that ER trauma surgeons are doing to speak up and help stop the violence in senseless shootings that occur, because more than 118,000 people are shot every year in the United States. After the film, Andrew Botsford will host a Q&A with Schiliro, who has also directed films including “The Obama Years: The Power of Words” and “The President’s Photographer.”
2:30 p.m. “Missing in Brooks County” (80 min.) In this film directed by award-winning filmmakers Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss, two families search for their loved ones who went missing in the vast ranch lands of Brooks County, Texas, the site of more migrant deaths than anywhere else in the country. On their journey, they meet vigilante ranchers, humanitarian activists, Border Patrol search-and-rescue teams and others locked in the national immigration debate. Director Jeff Bemiss will engage in a Q&A with Andrew Botsford on Zoom.
5:00 p.m. “Into the Night: Portraits of Life & Death, Part 2” (117 min.) This film deeply explores the question of what makes a meaningful life, often with surprising answers. It probes into how rapidly-advancing science in the fields of aging might be changing our narratives about death, includes artists and writers wrestling with their desire for legacy, a doctor facing stage four cancer, and the journey of a Buddhist monk whose life work is bringing contemplative care to the dying. The director Helen Whitney, who is an Emmy and Peabody-winning film producer, director and writer, will speak with Andrew Botsford after the film. “Into the Night, Part 1” received Hamptons Doc Fest’s Filmmakers’ Choice Award in 2017.
7:30 p.m. “The Adventures of Saul Bellow” (85 min.) Directed by Asaf Galay, who uses the documentary medium to rethink Jewish and Israeli relationships with modern culture, this film—the first-ever documentary about author Saul Bellow—traces his rise to eminence and examines his many identities—reluctant public intellectual, serial husband, father, Chicagoan, Jew and American. The title is a take-off on Bellow’s novel “The Adventures of Augie March.” Galay will participate in a post-film Q&A with Andrew Botsford.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, BAY STREET THEATER
10:00 a.m. Young Voices Program: a special program for middle and high school students, faculty and family, that includes short films and a lively workshop on filmmaking with Megan Kiefer, founder of Take Two Film Academy.
2:00 p.m. Shorts Program 1 (65 min.) This trio of shorts, which features Andrew Botsford interviewing director Caroline Devoe and co-producer Tiffany Jackman, director Lauren Rothman with co-producer Cade Huseby, and director Christine Turner includes:
“Anthony Crawford: The Man the South Forgot” (27 min.), directed by Caroline Devoe, about a young African-American woman who journeys from the North to her South Carolina hometown to find out what tragically happened to her great-great grandfather Anthony Crawford;
“At What Cost” (22 min.), directed by Lauren Rothman, a film student at the University of Southern California, who befriends the editor of the school newspaper in order to investigate the causes of the death of nine students and the impact they had on the rest of the university;
“Lynching Postcards: Tokens of a Great Day” (16 min.), directed by Christine Turner, about the lynchings from 1880-1968 of over 4,000 African Americans, which were staged as public celebrations and commemorated by photos and postcards that later would be used to expose the racist violence.
4:00 p.m. “Truth Tellers” (62 min.) directed by Richard Kane and co-produced with his wife Melody Lewis-Kane, chronicles the lives of courageous Americans fighting for peace, racial equity, environmental justice and indigenous rights through the eyes of activist and artist Robert Shetterly, who painted 255 portraits of Americans, past and present, who had the moral courage to confront issues of social, environmental and economic justice. These portraits of “Americans who tell the truth” have been exhibited throughout the United States for nearly 20 years. Two of Kane’s previous films about artists—“I Know a Man … Ashley Bryan” and “Imber’s Left Hand” have been screened at Hamptons Doc Fest before and are all part of the Maine Masters collection. Post-film, Andrew Botsford will host a conversation with Kane.
6:00 p.m. Shorts Program 2 (85 min.) This trio of shorts, which features Andrew Botsford interviewing directors David Baram and Roger Sherman includes:
“One All the Way” (24 min.), directed by David Baram. Three New Jersey seniors search each week for the world’s great Hot Texas Wiener and along the way discover what has happened to their hometown of Princeton, New Jersey.
“The Soul of a Farmer” (35 min.) shadows former chef Patty Gentry as she battles to earn a living on her three-acre Early Girl Farm on Long Island, which she rents from Isabella Rossellini, who has proclaimed that “Patty is the Picasso of vegetables!” Director is Roger Sherman, who has won two Academy Award nominations, an Emmy, a Peabody and a James Beard Award.
“Shoot from the Heart” (26 min.) Directed by Joan Churchill and Alan Barker, it centers around a rollicking evening with esteemed filmmakers Haskell Wexler, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, as seen through the lens of Churchill.
8 p.m. “No Ordinary Life” (76 min.) This film documents the extraordinary story of five pioneering camerawomen—Mary Rogers, Cynde Strand, Jane Evans, Maria Fleet and Margaret Moth—who went to the frontiers of wars, disasters and revolutions, including Tiananmen Square and the Arab Spring uprising, to find and film the truth. Director is Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Heather O’Neill, who has directed and produced many documentaries for the Discovery Channel and CNN Presents. Andrew Botsford will interview her for the Q&A.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, BAY STREET THEATER, Saunders Free Community Day
Thanks to the generous support of Saunders & Associates, all films screening on Friday, December 10, at Bay Street Theater are free to the public. Reservations to insure seating are required at Bay Street Theater Box Office, 631-725-9500.
12:00 “Tigre Gente” (93 min.) Directed by Elizabeth Unger, a National Geographic Explorer and filmmaker, this documentary reveals the illicit jaguar trade pervasive in the Madidi National Park in Bolivia and also the selling of jaguar teeth in China and Myanmar—both leading to the eventual eradication of the species.
2:30 p.m. “Television Event” (91 min.) This film looks at how ABC took a terrifying subject—a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that escalated into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union—and turned it into a prime-time made-for-TV film called “The Day After” in 1983, viewed by over 100 million people. In “Television Event,” director Jeff Daniels, who was only five at the time, examines how ABC created a media event that moved a nation to confront its fears and swayed international policy on nuclear proliferation. Daniels will be interviewed about the film on Zoom.
5 p.m. “Raise the Bar” (70 min.) Director Gudjon Ragnarsson tells the story of 8-to-13 year old girls on a basketball team in Iceland who were constantly trained to “raise the bar” and treated like professional athletes by their coach Brynjar Karl Sigurosson. Their coach and the film producer Margret Jonasdottir will both appear in the post-film Q&A with Andrew Botsford.
8:00 Closing Night Film, “Torn” (92 min.)
“Torn” (92 min.), directed by Max Lowe for National Geographic, will be shown at 8 p.m., followed by a possible Q&A on Zoom. The film provides an intimate look at the Lowe-Anker family as Alex Lowe’s eldest son Max Lowe, the director, captures their emotionally and physically-harrowing journey to Tibet’s 26,289-foot mountain Shishapangma to put Alex to rest after the renowned mountain climber was tragically lost with his cameraman David Bridges in a deadly avalanche there in 1999. Surviving was Alex’s best friend and mountaineer Conrad Ankar, who fell in love with Max’s widow Jennifer and stepped in to help raise Alex’s three sons.
Go to www.hamptonsdocfest.com for all passes and tickets, as no tickets will be sold at the Sag Harbor Cinema or Bay Street Theater this year.
