What happens when a panel of international directors sits down before an audience of independent, up-and-coming, mainly American filmmakers to discuss the art they share in common?

First they take their jabs at the multimillion-dollar Hollywood picture industry.

"On a Spanish film you shoot with the budget of the transition scenes in an American film," Manuel Gomez Pereira of Spain said at a filmmakers breakfast during the Hamptons International Film Festival Saturday.

Then they concentrate on the more insidious tactics of the American movie establishment machine. Nicholas Philibert of France pointed out that "the major studios control the screens and they say [for example], 'if you want the last Clint Eastwood film, you also have to take this package of 10 films.' "

The Struggle

As a result, "98 percent of the screens in Eastern Europe are occupied by American movies," he said.

Surprising? Consider this. The percentages are similarly high in European countries with better known cinematic traditions than Hungary or Kazakhstan. Even in countries like France, Germany, or Italy, the majority of big screens are filled with Hollywood products.

"It is an essential struggle to even be able to make films," Mr. Philibert told the tent full of filmmakers.

The "struggle," the effort it takes to not only complete a film, but then find a market for it and bring it to a broader audience, was something nearly every director or producer in the festival's V.I.P. tent that morning could understand. Many had just completed their first features, some were still film students, and others were renowned in small circles but relatively unknown to the average movie audience.

The Directors

Mr. Gomez Pereira, who directed "El Amor Prejudica la Salud" ("Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health"), which earned an audience award at the festival for best feature film, was one of the filmmakers spotlighted in the festival's homage to Spain's largest production company, Sogetel. Ironically, his next project, a $15 million English-language film, is likely to be co-produced by Sogetel and a big Hollywood studio.

Mr. Philibert was one of three "outstanding international directors" whose work was featured in the festival. Three of his films, "La Ville Louvre" ("Louvre City"), "Le Pays des Sourds" ("In the Land of the Deaf"), and "La Moindre des Choses" ("Every Little Thing"), were shown here. Though he generally makes documentaries, Mr. Philibert's next film, "Who Knows?" will include actors. He flew back to Paris Sunday and was to begin shooting on Monday. The actors, he said, "will build themselves a story. It will be a sort of documentary about the birth of fiction."

Tribute was also paid to the career of Alejandro Agresti of Argentina, another of the panelists. Mr. Agresti's films "La Cruz" ("The Cross"), "El Acto en Cuestion" ("The Act in Question"), and "Buenos Aires Vice Versa" were shown at the festival.

Captive Film

None of them has received wide distribution in the United States and "El Acto en Cuestion," which he considers his favorite and most important work is, in a sense, a captive in Holland. It was paid for in part with a grant from the Dutch Government, and in part with funds raised by his producer, who went bankrupt after the film was completed.

Now the Dutch Government lays claim to the work, the bank that lent the producer money owns the rights to it, and Mr. Agresti is left with a single print of his favorite film, which he literally carries from festival to festival. He said his next film is to be called "Wind With a Gone."

Also on the panel at the filmmakers breakfast were Sandrine Veysett of France, the director of the opening night film, "Y'Aura-t-il de la Neige a Noel?" ("Will It Snow for Christmas"); Eric Heumann of France, who directed "Port Djema," and Martin Walz, a Swiss director whose "Kondom des Grauens" ("Killer Condom") was shown as part of the festival's "subversive cinema" program.

Political Climates

Chances are American audiences outside of film school haven't heard of any one of them. Like their sometimes younger American counterparts in the tent, some were still hoping their latest films would get "picked up," if not at this festival, maybe at the next.

One young director talked about how the rise of the conservative right in this country was affecting Americans' ability to make the art they chose to make and asked if changing political climates had affected the panelists' work or the choices they made.

Mr. Agresti, who had begun his career in one of the darkest eras of Argentine history, when disappearances and death squads were at their height, said, "When you think about what film you can make, then you make a political film." Working under a military dictatorship, he said, "I couldn't tell these little stories that I would be fascinated to tell because I was saturated with politics."

Sometimes, he said, it is under the most oppressive conditions that you "have the freedom to invent."

Do What You Want

In America "you have to write the same film, over and over." Mr. Agresti then related a clip from a documentary he had seen about the Czech Republic in which the interviewee said, "In Czechoslovakia you are influenced by the taste of one idiot. In American you are influenced by . . ." And Mr. Agresti paused, then added, "I could hear him thinking 'millions of idiots. ' "

Ms. Veysett, speaking through a translator, underscored Mr. Agresti's comments, telling her fellow directors at the breakfast, "If I have any advice it is to do exactly what you want to do."

"Don't accept money if you have to pay for that money by giving up your freedom," she cautioned.

It's been 30 years since the gum-chomping Sheriff Gillespie and Virgil Tibbs (That's "Mr. Tibbs!") matched wits in one of the cinema's great murder mysteries, "In the Heat of the Night."

The Hamptons International Film Festival honored the milestone Saturday by screening the Academy Award-winning film for the first time in its newly restored state and inviting the film's key players for a panel discussion on Guild Hall's stage.

It proved to be a touching reunion. Though the filmmakers may have aged since 1967, most in attendance agreed the film's tough takes on racism and prejudice have not aged at all.

Impressive Panel

Set in a small, racially charged Mississippi town, "In the Heat of the Night" tells the story of a white sheriff who reluctantly accepts the help of a black detective from the North, in solving a murder. As the case unfolds, the two uneasily work their way toward understanding and mutual respect.

Rod Steiger, who won the Best Actor Oscar for the role of Bill Gillespie, joined the panel, although his co-star, Sidney Poitier, was unable to attend. Joining him were the film's director, Norman Jewison, the producer, Marvin Hamisch, the cinematographer, Haskell Wexler, and the actress Lee Grant, who also appeared in the film. Alan and Marilyn Bergman, who wrote the lyrics to the film's memorable title song, were also on hand.

A Great Vehicle

Nick Clooney of American Movie Classics moderated the discussion. Although the panelists discussed the film in terms of its overall context and meaning, there was ample time for some funny memories.

Mr. Steiger recounted his dispute with Mr. Jewison early on, when the director insisted he chew gum for his role. "I said, 'What is it with the gum?' I don't want to chew gum. It's the biggest cliche in the book," said Mr. Steiger. "Then I said, 'Christ, I can tell the audience what I'm thinking by how I chew my gum!" It turned out to be another ingredient in his Oscar-winning performance.

Other revelations included Mr. Hamisch's story of how the seed of the movie was planted: Mr. Poitier's agent had approached the producer with a copy of John Ball's novel, "In the Heat of the Night."

"He thought it would be a great vehicle for Sidney," Mr. Hamisch recalled. Indeed, Mr. Poitier's portrayal of the cool, shrewd Mr. Tibbs was successful enough for him to reprise it in "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" and "The Organization," as well as a television series 20 years later.

Gritty Realism

Stirling Silliphant won the Best Screenplay Oscar for his adaptation of the novel. The film itself was awarded Best Picture that year.

Mr. Jewison recalled that all involved knew they were working on a quality project at the time, but, "We never dreamed it was going to come out as well as it did." He attributed much of the success to its social context.

"None of us live in a vacuum," he said in response to one of Mr. Clooney's questions. "[The film] had a great deal to say about the condition of the country at the time. It was a story that needed to be told."

He credited Mr. Wexler for the film's "terse, semi-journalistic, gritty realism," noting the film had "a tremendous influence visually," because of Mr. Wexler's expert cinematography.

Money Consumes

Mr. Wexler drew a standing ovation from the audience Saturday, after a moving speech about the passion put into making the film. He borrowed Sheriff Gillespie's classic line, "I've got a motive, which is money, and a body, which is dead," and applied it to the film industry today.

"That motive, money, seems to be consuming our art," he said. "What you're seeing up here may be dinosaurs . . .what we had is people who wanted to make a film." He added that the film hasn't lost any social relevance, simply because "we're still alive and we're still struggling."

Michael Friend from the Academy of Film Sciences was also on the panel, to speak on the restoration of the film. "If these are dinosaurs," he said, borrowing from Mr. Wexler, "then I'm the neighborhood paleontologist!"

Important Resources

The Academy of Film Sciences, along with MGM, has been working for two years on the restoration, which is yet to be completed. The film can be seen on video, but general deterioration has kept it from being shown on the big screen. Saturday's audience was the first to see a nearly completely restored print of the film.

Mr. Friend stressed that preservation of such films as "In the Heat of the Night," is important not just as a novelty. In the same vein as preserving natural resources, he said, "there are important human resources in these films we need for the future."

The screening and panel discussion were hosted by the Artists Rights Foundation.

The glow they saw seemed to come from the African coast.

That was good news for the mutineers aboard the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship two months into what had started as a three-day trip, a vessel encrusted with barnacles, its shredded sails flapping to little avail. The Africans ordered the captain, one of two Spaniards they had decided not to kill, to head for what held the promise of home.

Unfortunately, it was the Montauk Light.

Storytellers from Herman Melville to Steven Spielberg have made great hay of the true tale that followed in 1839: a landing at Culloden, Montauk, where a local whaling captain tried to swindle the Africans out of their cargo; a United States Supreme Court trial in which former President John Quincy Adams came to their defense; the final return, two years later, of the Africans to Sierra Leone.

Melville To Spielberg

In Melville's case the tale took the form of a short story called "Benito Cereno." In Mr. Spielberg's it will be, come December, a feature film.

And in the case of Anthony Davis, it will be a full-orchestra jazz opera, with a primarily black cast, to open at the Lyric Opera of Chicago on Nov. 29, two weeks before the release of the Spielberg film.

It makes good opera sense that someone would choose to use the story of the most significant anti-slavery victory prior to the Civil War as a libretto.

Proper Credentials

Mr. Davis brought "The Life and Times of Malcolm X" to the New York City Opera six years before Spike Lee's film about the militant black leader. He put the story of Patty Hearst, another captive - and, depending on your point of view, insurrectionist - to music in another opera. He also wrote the music for "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's Broadway play about AIDS.

According to Opera News, Beverly Sills, the City Opera's general director, declined to mount "Amistad," calling its subject matter too grim - although she admires the power of Mr. Davis's music.

The Mende Revolt

"It's really an American story. The clash of cultures, the clash of theology and philosophy, the idea of enslaving another person - what our country is made of is essentially a creation of slavery," Mr. Davis says in a release.

Despite a ban on the international slave trade in 1839, 53 people, mostly Mende from Sierra Leone, were abducted, shackled to each other, and shipped off with other "cargo" to Cuba. After being sold in Havana, they were packed aboard the Amistad, whose Spanish name ironically means "friendship," for transport to a Cuban port three days away.

Some historians have concluded that the Mende believed deeply in their right to liberty. In any case, a bold 25-year-old Mende named Cinque led a mutiny in the middle of the night that spared only two Spaniards to steer the boat back to Africa.

By day the Spaniards followed the course they were directed to. By night, however, they steered north in hope of a rescue.

No Slaves Or Spaniards

For two months, they traveled off the North American coast. To mutual bewilderment, the landing party at Culloden met with five South Fork men on the beach at Montauk. Relieved to learn that there were neither Spaniards nor slaves in the area, the Mende offered to pay the South Fork men to take them back to Sierra Leone. That led one of the men to suspect that the Amistad bore valuable cargo, and decide to try to relieve them of it instead.

Then a United States naval cutter came by and relieved the Africans of their liberty as well.

What followed was two years of litigation revolving around Henry Green's, one of the men's, claim to the loot and the Spanish Government's desire to try the Africans for murder. The Africans' difficulty in defending themselves in their own language of course encumbered their effort.

Were Freed

But the abolitionists took up the Africans' cause, using the case as an example of the immorality of slavery. On the other hand, President Martin Van Buren agreed to help the Spanish Government satisfy its slave traders and was prepared to use a Navy ship to return the Mende to Cuba.

From a New Haven, Conn., jail, one of the African children wrote to former President John Quincy Adams beseeching him to help, and he agreed. Even without taking his endorsement into account, however, the Supreme Court ruled on a technicality that the captives were free men, and that their mutiny had been justified.

"Musically it's a profoundly demanding piece. I have to represent those clashes musically. There are so many dramatic moments - on the ship, the capture, in the courtroom," Mr. Davis also says in the release.

Clashes

"We're dealing with icons - Cinque, leader of the Mende revolt, John Quincy Adams, the former President, the abolitionist Tappan, as well as African deities. We can tell the story from dialectically opposing points of view."

The African deities - the Trickster and the Goddess of the Waters, to be sung by the tenor Thomas Young and the mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar - are Mr. Davis's embellishments. An impish African deity known for disguise and translation, akin to Shakespeare's Puck, the Trickster stays on in America after the other Africans go home.

Mr. Davis reportedly has turned the tables on the Americans who viewed the Africans as "primitives." The opera will be sung in English with projected English titles, but the Trickster's music will be more elaborate, with West African percussion, than the Americans'.

Opening Symposium

Mark S. Doss, a bass, will portray Cinque, who was said to give a spirited defense in his native tongue. "I never heard his eloquence surpassed, although uttered in words not understood," wrote Henry P. Hedges of Bridgehampton, a law student and historian who attended the district court trial.

Dennis Russell Davies will conduct the opera, which also stars Mark Baker, Eugene Perry, Stephen West, and Kimberly Jones.

The day the opera opens, there will be an all-day symposium, with Amistad scholars, the composer, and Thulani Davis, the opera's librettist and the composer's cousin. The Lyric Opera of Chicago, which commissioned the work, also plans to host student performances of "Amistad" and to provide Chicago schools with an Amistad curriculum, including visiting lecturers and artists and a sourcebook on the opera, and a benefit in January will commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday.

The legacy goes on.

Frank Lloyd Wright has been dead for almost 40 years, yet the man who many say was the world's greatest architect - and who was certainly its most famous - remains very much in the public eye, most recently with the completion of Monona Terrace, a civic center in Madison, Wis. Wright first proposed Monona Terrace in the mid-1930s and his followers finished it this summer.

One reason for Wright's long run in the limelight is Edgar Tafel of Springs. The retired architect, who has consulted on many documentaries and exhibits of Wright's work, lectures extensively about his nine years as one of Wright's apprentices at universities and museums across the country.

He is the author of "Years With Frank Lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius," a memoir, and of "About Wright," a collection of letters and stories.

"I Was There"

"I do it because I love the history," said Mr. Tafel, who at 85 retains an almost photographic memory and spouts Frank Lloyd Wright anecdotes as readily as a dedicated baseball fan can recall his favorite player's batting average from 10 years ago.

"There is a tremendous amount of interest in the subject," he said. "People want to know about Mr. Wright. Why should they go ask some professor who will tell them what they think he was about? I was there."

Mr. Tafel joined Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in Spring Green, Wis., in 1932 after his first year of studies at New York University, and extended what had begun as a one-year stay to 1941, when he broke off to start his own practice.

His arrival at Taliesin came during the depths of the Depression, when building had ground to a halt. Wright, at the time, was trying to revive a career that had been severely damaged by scandal - he had run off with the wife of a client - and to erase his reputation as a deadbeat.

While commissions were few, it was a time of great intellectual ferment and inspiration. During Mr. Tafel's stay, Wright and his associates executed some of their most famous work.

The projects included Fallingwater, Edgar J. Kaufmann's country home outside Pittsburgh, universally known for its poured concrete balconies cantilevered over a rushing stream; the brick and glass Johnson Wax Company building in Racine, Wis., which caused a sensation when it opened in 1938 and continues to draw tourists, including a good many architects from around the world, and Wingspread, a low-slung, sprawling Johnson family residence north of Racine.

Usonian Community

The fellowship also labored on Wright's Broad Acre City, a vision of urban living in the future; early plans for Monona Terrace, and some of Wright's first Usonian homes, designed as affordable housing for the middle class.

"People ask me if Mr. Wright had any influence on me," said Mr. Tafel. "If you studied with Beethoven, and were there when he composed his nine symphonies, something would have to rub off."

Or, at the very least, dazzle the observer.

Once, Mr. Tafel recounted, Wright received a phone call from Mr. Kaufmann in Pittsburgh. He wanted to come to Taliesin to check on the progress of his house.

"Come along, E.J. We're ready for you," Wright told his client.

In the drafting room, there was quiet panic. While the site had been plotted, Wright had not committed a single sketch to paper.

Wright At Work

For the next several days, as he drove toward Wisconsin, the client called to check in. Each time, Wright reassured him, but did nothing.

Finally, a call came from Milwaukee. Mr. Kaufmann was less than 140 miles away.

After hanging up the phone, Wright strode into the drafting room and sat down. While Mr. Tafel and another assistant kept him supplied with sharp pencils, Wright began to draw, erase, draw again, all the time talking to himself about where the Kaufmanns would take their afternoon tea and such.

When Mr. Kaufmann was announced a few short hours later, Wright had completed the floor plans and elevations for one of his masterpieces.

"E.J.!" he said. "We've been waiting for you!"

His Own Mark

While acknowledging Wright's artistic drive and individuality ("He was not a product of the system.")Mr. Tafel was not afraid to make his own mark.

"Just because you were influenced by him didn't mean everything you did had to be Wrightian," he said at the Louse Point Road residence he shares with his companion, Jean Gollay. "Take this house. There is nothing Frank Lloyd Wright about it. It's all Jean and Edgar."

That's true. The couple live in a bayman's house that has been extensively renovated and expanded in a traditional style, including the addition of a second story and a rooftop terrace with a view of Accabonac Harbor.

Mr. Tafel designed the living room, with a study above, to let light enter from all sides. An enclosed staircase provides ample wall space for an extensive art collection. The overall effect is of simplicity and comfort, like a favorite sweater.

Early Education

Mr. Tafel was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants. "My mother was a seamstress. She worked in sweatshops," he said. His father claimed to have "printed his own passport" to get to the United States. Together, they started a dressmaking business.

When success came, the Tafels, "who were involved in the Liberal movement," moved to Stelton, N.J., and joined the Ferrer Colony, named for a Spanish educator and anarchist who had been executed by the Spanish Government in 1909.

Their son attended the colony's Modern School. "Every morning, we assembled and sang and danced. Then we could go to whatever class we wanted, sculpture, painting, printing. They taught English in printing class."

Playing With Blocks

The boy enjoyed playing with colorful blocks and designing model towns with them. "Everyone said, 'Edgar is going to be an architect.' "

Later, Mr. Tafel attended the Walden School in Manhattan - he would later design an addition to the school - before transferring to a public high school and taking art classes on the side. The books he was reading about his chosen field included "The Autobiography of an Idea" by Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect with whom Frank Lloyd Wright got his start, and Mr. Wright's own autobiography, published in 1932.

That summer, an aunt showed him an article in The New York Herald-Tribune. "Your hero is opening an architecture school," she said.

At Taliesin

Mr. Tafel applied and was accepted, at a reduced tuition. Wright took him for less money, he later learned, because he was so strapped for cash.

At Taliesin, times were hard. "It was terrible," Mr. Tafel said. "There was simply no money."

Students were put to work renovating and expanding Wright's beloved house and studio on a hill overlooking the Wisconsin River Valley. They plowed fields and helped with the cooking. With no work coming in, they spent their time recopying Wright's older buildings.

"One of the basics at Taliesin was, we lived in buildings that we put together. We worked in buildings that we put together. It stuck with you."

Supervised Fallingwater

As things improved, the apprentices who had been at Taliesin for a while were given more responsibilities. Mr. Tafel supervised the work at Fallingwater for a time and served as clerk of the works at the Johnson Wax building.

Eventually, he began to bring in his own work. He designed a house, with Wright's help, for a friend of Mr. Johnson's in Racine. The clients were thrilled, said Mr. Tafel, but when the great man caught wind of his apprentice's success, he did a slow burn.

"He called a meeting of the fellowship at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night," Mr. Tafel said. "We knew something important was up because he never did that."

Wright told the group that henceforth apprentices who brought in outside work would be responsible for it but would receive only one-third the commission, not half as before. "There will be only one prima donna in this organization," he told them, "and I'm it."

Independence

The end came soon for Mr. Tafel. "A few of the guys were sitting around drinking beer one night analyzing the future," he said, "and I realized it wasn't going to work for me." He resigned the next day. When he told Wright of his plans to leave, the response was, "The sooner, the better."

It would not be easy. Mr. Tafel went to work for a major firm in Chicago, where Wright's reputation had not yet recovered from his indiscretions. "They called him Frank Lloyd Wrong."

One day, one of the firm's principals happened by Mr. Tafel's drafting table. "I see you were with Wright," he said. "I suppose you think he's the best architect in the country."

Mr. Tafel thought about it for a moment and replied, "I'd have to say he's the best architect in the world." That evening, a white envelope appeared on his desk. In it was his paycheck and a letter informing him he had been fired.

On His Own

The United States entered World War II soon after, and Mr. Tafel quickly found work with Uncle Sam. For most of the war he was stationed in Calcutta, India, doing drafting work for an Army photo-intelligence unit.

After the war, said Mr. Tafel, "I decided I was never going to work for anyone else again." He returned to New York, passed his architecture exams, and opened his own practice.

By now Wright's reputation had recovered, and Mr. Tafel received some commissions thanks to his former association. Mostly, though, he said, word spread that "my buildings came in on time, within budget, and they didn't leak" - which was not always the case with his mentor, he remarked with a sly smile.

Unlike Wright, who could be arrogant and unbending - when Mr. Johnson complained of a leaky roof at Wingspread, Wright told him to move his chair - Mr. Tafel learned the importance of pragmatism.

"You have to please your clients. You have to solve their problem," he said.

SUNY Commissions

The approach worked. Mr. Tafel has designed 90 houses and 35 churches and synagogues, including the church school and office at Manhattan's First Presbyterian Church on West 12th Street, one of his favorites.

His practice later expanded to include commissions for the State University of New York system. In a joint venture, Mr. Tafel's firm and two others designed the expansion of the State University at Geneseo in the '60s. Mr. Tafel was responsible for the fine arts building, a student center, and dormitories.

In the mid-70s, at the height of his career, Mr. Tafel employed 20 people. "We had $25 million worth of projects on the table - and then the crash came," he said.

Unrelenting inflation was battering the economy. A slew of projects were stillborn, including an $8 million social science building for the State University at Buffalo. "They had the contracts drawn up, but they couldn't sell the bonds," the architect recalled.

Second Career

He eventually was forced to give up his office and most of his staff, setting up a smaller operation in his Greenwich Village house with a few trusted employees. "We poked along like that for a few more years," Mr. Tafel said.

By then, however, as the interest in Wright "just grew and grew and grew," he had launched his second career. Although he left Wright's employ under a bit of a cloud, Mr. Tafel had re-established ties during the 1950s, even helping Wright find the contractor who would build his last work, the Guggenheim Museum, within budget.

He was never sure what Wright really thought of him, though, until 1959, when he met a former colleague at Wright's funeral. The man said he had asked Wright his opinion of Mr. Tafel not long before he died. "Edgar Tafel has a mind of his own," the master replied.

For many of the young and aspiring filmmakers attending this year's Hamptons International Film Festival, winning a prize at the awards gala Sunday night wasn't as important as the opportunity they had to have their work seen by audiences. Still, it is awfully nice to win.

"When we got into this festival we felt we had already won," said Maureen Foley, the director of "Home Before Dark," which shared the festival's highest honor, the Golden Starfish Award, with another American independent film, "Destination Unknown," directed by Nestor Miranda.

"I really did not expect this tonight," said a surprised Mr. Miranda, whose film made its world premiere at the Hamptons Festival. "I didn't dress up or anything."

Jury Prizes

This was the second year in a row that the Golden Starfish jury could not settle on one of the 10 films vying for the award, which this year brought a prize of cash, supplies, and services worth more than $180,000.

This year's jury featured Anouk Aimee, the actress, Doro Bachrach, a producer, and A.M. Homes, an author, as well as Jay Chandrasekhar ("Puddle Cruiser") and Matt Mahurin ("Mugshot"), last year's co-winners. Ms. Foley and Mr. Miranda can be expected to return to East Hampton next October, as the festival announced its intention this year to bring back winners as jurors.

Michael Almereyda's 23-minute film, "Rocking Horse Winner," was the same jury's favorite in the short film competition.

Hard Choices

"Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's," directed by Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman, was honored as the best documentary by a jury that featured R.J. Cutler ("The War Room" and "Perfect Candidate"), Bill Greaves ("Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice"), Ian Bernie (director of the film department at the Los Angeles County Museum), Renee Tajima-Pena ("My Country," "Who Killed Vincent Chin"), and Robert Hawk, a veteran film programmer.

Presenting the award were Ben Stone of Eastman Kodak, which added to the trophy a $2,500 prize, and Mr. Greaves, who credited the film's makers with catching "this event at a very, very crucial moment." Mr. Greaves also announced a special citation for another documentary the jury also admired, Michele Ohayon's "Colors Straight Up," which had already won the audience award for best documentary.

"These films each had redeeming qualities. . . . We had to make hard decisions," Mr. Greaves said.

A more substantial sum - $10,000 to be exact - went along with the new Lifetime Television for Women "Vision Award" to James Rosenow, the director of "Crossing Fields," which enjoyed its world premiere at the festival. The award - meant to recognize the film that best illustrates issues of concern to women - was presented by Doug McCormick, the president of Lifetime, a new sponsor of the Hamptons Festival, and Daphne Zuniga, who is known to audiences from TV's "Melrose Place" and who was in "Stand-Ins" in this year's festival.

Best Score

"I can't wait till the day that material is written [for] and given to women as equally as men," said Ms. Zuniga, one of the few more recognizable celebrities spotted around the Film Festival.

Mr. Rosenow thanked above all his mother, who attended the festival to see her son succeed despite terminal cancer. When the chatter that had been heard coming from the back of the tent all evening continued during his remarks, the emotional director snapped at the rude part of the audience, to the applause of the rest of the audience.

"You have to understand that filmmaking is a three-year process. . . . Please give us the respect to be quiet long enough to hear what we have to say."

Presented for the first time this year was an award in recognition of the best original score. The award is underwritten by Judah Klausner, a Sagaponack resident, and was presented by him and Hal McKusick, the jazz musician who lives in Sag Harbor. The director of the French film "Port Djema," Eric Heumann, was not present to accept his award.

The Golden Starfish and short film jury also gave a citation for best acting to Julie Kessler of Upstate.

Audience Winners

Elizabeth Schub, the director of "Cuba 15," didn't even know she was eligible for a prize until her film was announced the audience short film pick.

Two foreign films tied as the audience winners for best feature film: "Il Ciclone" ("The Cyclone") by Leonardo Pieraccioni and "El Amor Perjudica Seriamente La Salud" ("Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health"), directed by Manuel G¢mez Pereira.

"Thank you so much to the audience, because this prize is the best that can be given to a director," Mr. Gomez Pereira said through a translator.

As announced earlier, Amy Talkington, a graduate student at Columbia University, was given the special RKO award for the best-told story in a student film. Her "Number One Fan" was one of 10 student films chosen for inclusion in the festival; each filmmaker received $2,500.

Two new exhibits that will open at Guild Hall in East Hampton this weekend will share a little of East Hampton's history with their viewers. Both "Montauk Point Lighthouse: Two Hundred Years" and "The Moran Family Legacy" will be celebrated with an opening reception Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

The artwork of several generations of the Moran family, who were particularly active in East Hampton's artist summer colony of the second half of the 19th century, will be the focus of a significant exhibit. It will feature works by Thomas Moran, his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, and their children Paul Moran and Mary Scott Moran Tassin; Thomas's brothers, Edward, Peter, and John, and brother-in-law, Stephen Ferris, and their children.

The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, among them a number of Moran family works not previously shown. Highlights include many images of East Hampton scenes such as the Montauk Lighthouse, Town Pond and Hook Pond in East Hampton, and Western landscapes such as Yellowstone Canyon and the Grand Canyon.

Family Influence

Archival photographs and accompanying text will depict the family at work and play and shed light on family members' influences on each other. A special feature will be a recreation of Thomas Moran's East Hampton studio, complete with original furniture, artist's easel, etching table, and sketch book.

Curated by Katherine Cameron, "The Moran Family Legacy" is a joint venture with the East Hampton Library's Pennypacker Long Island Collection, and draws heavily on the collection's Thomas Moran archives. Ms. Cameron wrote her master's thesis at New York University on the East Hampton art colony between 1875 and 1900, and curated Guild Hall's "East Hampton: The 19th Century Artists' Paradise" in 1991 and "The Artist as Teacher: William Merritt Chase and Irving Wiles" in 1994.

Mr. Moran and his family lived in East Hampton from 1878 until his daughter's death in 1948; his Main Street studio and home, which overlooks Town Pond, was built in 1884 and was the gathering place for his extended family over the years. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark and has been bequeathed to Guild Hall.

Lighthouse Exhibit

Two talks and a bus trip to Washington, D.C., where a retrospective of Thomas Moran's work will run concurrently at the National Gallery of Art, are scheduled for November in conjunction with Guild Hall's exhibit.

The Montauk Lighthouse exhibit includes 22 paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, the oldest of which is a U.S. Government drawing from 1796, the year construction of the George Washington-commissioned lighthouse be gan. The guest curator of the show was Terry Wallace, the owner of the Wallace Gallery in East Hampton.

Among the artists represented in the exhibit are Gloriana Stratton, the first teacher at Third House in Montauk, and A.T. Bricher, Walter Granville-Smith, Reynolds Beal, Gilbert Guillery, Ralph Carpentier, Francesco Bologna, Joseph Barni kowski, Stan Bair, Kathryn Abbe, and Thomas and Edward Moran.

Both exhibits will run through Jan. 6, 1998.

Children's Museum

The Children's Museum of the East End and Guild Hall in East Hampton have joined together on a pilot project called "Time and Place . . . Light and Space," a hands-on way for children and adults to learn together through exhibits at the museum.

Opening Sunday and on exhibit through Jan. 11, 1998, "Time and Place . . . Light and Space" will include activities such as a blowup of a Thomas Moran landscape (which will be featured at the same time in "The Moran Family Legacy" exhibit) with a number of doors that can be opened, revealing facts about the environment inside; a Victorian costume corner where children can see how they look in the dress of that era, and a giant felt board, where children are invited to create their own landscapes.

A nonprofit organization, the Children's Museum was founded in April of 1996. Its founders hope to receive support from the community in order to expand into a permanent location.

Raymond Gualtieri, the East Hampton School District superintendent, announced last Thursday that in March, the district will propose spending $79.7 million to expand the John M. Marshall Elementary School and East Hampton High School. That sum is about $10 million less than the one proposed in a referendum that was soundly defeated in June. The earlier proposal would have allowed for a new middle school building and a greater expansion of the high school.

The new figure includes 5-percent inflation increases for construction costs for the duration of the project. In today's dollars, it translates to just under $67 million. Dr. Gualtieri told those attending last Thursday's districtwide site-based committee meeting that "in the best-case scenario," the expansion could be completed by September 2012.

The school board has asked for help from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle in working to repeal the Wicks Law, legislation that requires that government institutions hire several different contractors for public works projects that cost over $50,000.

It has been estimated that this requirement can add as much as 30 percent to the cost of some projects. If the Wicks Law were repealed, the school could save as much as $10 million, according to Dr. Gualtieri.

Enrollment at all three schools is expected to rise over the next 10 years, Dr. Gualtieri said, adding that the buildings are already overcrowded. The high school has 1,071 students in a building meant to serve 800.

Some of those attending the meeting - there were about 30 people in all, including members of the elementary school, middle school, and high school site-based committees - wondered what Dr. Gualtieri planned to do if the referendum were defeated.

"We're going to be buying Band-Aids out the wazoo," he replied.

Specifically, the district will continue to buy portable classrooms. It already has 10 of these, at a cost of $300,000 each for a three-year lease.

"If the referendum fails in March, the first priority is to get kids out of the middle school basement and build a trailer park at John Marshall," Dr. Gualtieri said. The district would move fifth graders from the building to 10 portable trailers, he said.

The district would then have to repair the roofs of all three buildings and remove two oil tanks at the high school with money from its regular budget. There would be an attempt to pass pieces of the expansion project one at a time.

"It's going to be a significant amount of money for a patch job," said Dr. Gualtieri, who added that the district spent almost to $200,000 preparing the last referendum for a vote. That sum will also go up if a second bond vote is defeated.

Wendy Hall, the school board president, asked those attending the meeting to start informing the community about the new plan.

"We are really between a rock and a hard place," she said. "We feel that this project is a reality. Talk it up and get excited about it. We need that."

In an unheated beachfront cottage with a roaring fire, gourmet treats, and hot cider, Gary Ireland asked his neighbors and fellow villagers on Saturday to support his candidacy for Sagaponack Village's first mayor.

Mr. Ireland, a lawyer who works primarily in New York but has an office in Bridgehampton, is running against Bill Tillotson, a full-time Sagaponack resident who owns a nursery and is co-chairman of the Sagaponack Citizens Advisory Committee.

A lawsuit Mr. Ireland filed on behalf of his mother against the county to cut back or remove the Georgica jetty field and replenish beaches to the west was joined by Southampton Town last year. Mr. Ireland's grandparents built the cottage and it has been moved twice since then.

Some 20 guests mingled inside and outside the cottage. Many of them were beachfront property owners who expressed frustration that a run of fish off the beach at Town Line Road that had held steady for several hours was out of reach without a boat.

Roy Scheider and his son, Christian, as well as Ashby and Pat Grantham, who have lost hundreds of feet of dune between them, had more pressing concerns. They were on hand to endorse Mr. Ireland and his efforts to correct beach erosion in Sagaponack.

The Granthams, who are still sleeping in their house even though they believe the ocean could take it out in the next storm, said that Mr. Ireland "has a grip on what's going on."

In contrast, Mrs. Grantham cited the various town and state officials who came to "witness a disaster" during and after the last storm, but would not allow them to protect their house with anything stronger than sandbags, which, she said, "won't last five minutes." Mrs. Grantham said that after the storms, the town poured "20 truckloads of sand at the end of [Town Line Road] that the ocean took away."

She said that Sagaponack needs "politicians who are reasonable, who just listen to you. Gary is that person. He knows about beach erosion. He's been trying to get the jetties removed for years."

Mrs. Grantham said she did not expect people to "give us a dune. We'll do it." Nonetheless she wants something hard underneath the sand. In front of the Granthams' house the erosion has revealed large concrete pieces shaped like jacks and piles of old cars, upon which their house is perched. Until the 1960s, "people were encouraged to throw anything in front of the dune. They understood that you need something hard there."

Mr. Scheider, who brought in truckloads of sand to protect his house, said he did not favor "hard solutions" such as rocks, but did want an aggressive approach for the removal of the Georgica jetties and for regular beach replenishment.

"I've seen pictures of the beach over long periods of time," Mr. Scheider said. "The sand comes and goes naturally." But with the jetties to the east, he said the beaches need regular nourishment, which he has been doing himself for 11 years.

After two very damaging storms this season, "there is a cliff of Sagaponack clay in front of my house," he said. The sand he brought in was very expensive and he knows it will wash out, but he hopes it will get him through the winter.

"Gary is fighting the good fight," he said. "No one in East Hampton wants to take responsibility for those groins. No other politician has made a commitment."

Cynthia Sestito, a local chef, provided food and drink for the group. Paul Guilden, a Town Line Road resident who is not registered to vote, agreed to make phone calls for Mr. Ireland.

Many people said they came because they believed Sagaponack Village needs control over its zoning. Barbara Skydel, who spends her weekends on Daniel's Lane, said the first issue for Sagaponack was "what it looks like, what it's becoming, and what we have lost - the very nature of what Sagaponack was about. We're at a critical point in Sagaponack's future. If we do not add zoning now, Sagaponack will be lost. It almost is."

Mr. Ireland supports the creation of a zoning board. The Sagaponack Party, of which Mr. Tillotson is a member along with four trustee candidates, has said it would preserve the present functions of the town in order not to increase taxes.

Mr. Tillotson said last Thursday that a zoning board in a small community could "tear the place apart." Although Mr. Tillotson has been opposed to certain town zoning decisions in the past, he worries that the people who would want the control might want to do too much.

He wondered if Mr. Ireland ever sat through a six-hour town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. "I'm amazed someone would want to do that for seven years." Most of the time, Mr. Tillotson noted, it was hard to get a quorum for a Citizens Advisory Committee meeting.

Mr. Tillotson said he spoke to people in North Haven who told him that the village zoning board asks less time of its members than the town Z.B.A. does, but that the money involved is considerable. Lawsuits against the village if it became too restrictive would be costly to taxpayers as well.

Some of those at Mr. Ireland's cottage on Saturday were still annoyed by Ira Rennert's house approval. Sheila and Albert Bialek, who have a house on Fairfield Pond Road, were part of a homeowners association that fought the Rennert development. They said Mr. Ireland would fight for them and would see that special exceptions to the zoning law not be allowed as they are in the town.

Mr. Ireland said he will also fight for more farmland preservation. Mr. Tillotson wondered if he had seen the actual numbers. He said that Sagaponack is receiving a good share of the town's interest and Community Preservation Funds. He cited the purchase of Poxabogue Golf Course, the recent purchase of the Lauder property, and other purchases.

In fact, the town has bought the rights or development rights to 247 acres in Sagaponack at a cost of $15.5 million. The total collected from the area's real estate transfers through May of this year is just over $10 million.

Mr. Ireland said he will continue to meet with groups and the media to get his message out before Election Day, which is Dec. 2. In contrast, Mr. Tillotson, who knows most of the area's registered voters, is taking a more laid-back approach. He left on Saturday for a vacation and will not be back until Wednesday.

"It has not necessarily been a flamboyant past, but for me, it has been very rewarding," Cathy Lester wrote in a 1983 letter to the East Hampton Town Democratic screening committee.

Ms. Lester would eventually become East Hampton Town Supervisor, but at the time she was seeking the Democrats' nomination for town trustee, her first foray into town politics. She won the nomination and served for two terms before becoming a member of the town planning board for three years, then a town board member, and finally, in 1995, winning election as town supervisor. Ms. Lester, who was 60, died on Monday. The family did not know the cause of death as of press time.

A baywoman from the age of 16, she was passionate about the town's harbors and bays and determined to protect the natural environment and a way of life she loved. "That led her to a political career that she never envisioned," said Lynn Ryan, Ms. Lester's executive assistant during her second term as supervisor.

Born on March 4, 1945, in Southampton and raised in Tuckahoe, Ms. Lester was a daughter of the former Helen Dix and Ruben Shaffer. Her father was a boatbuilder and the co-owner and manager of a boatyard. Growing up, Ms. Lester spent most of her free time with her father at the yard and worked there in the summers. "I seem to have a compelling urge to be near the water," she wrote in that 1983 letter.

She left high school after her sophomore year, and on Sept. 7, 1961, was married to Thomas Lester, an East Hampton bayman. The couple worked together on the bay until the following year, when their daughter, Della Ann, was born. After a few years at home with her daughter, Ms. Lester returned to fishing.

"I think she was as proud of being a baywoman as anything else in the world," said Brad Loewen, her nephew by marriage.

With her husband, Ms. Lester became active in the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association and later was a founding member and president of the Northwest Alliance, a group that led the successful drive for the preservation of the Grace Estate in Northwest Woods and Barcelona Neck.

Both organizations believed that developing the Grace Estate on the banks of Northwest Harbor would harm the harbor's pristine quality and its value as a shellfish resource.

Her involvement in that cause was the beginning of her public life. By example, she encouraged others to become more active in preservation and town politics. "She was kind of the groundbreaker for so many of us that came behind her," Mr. Loewen said. It was largely because of her that Mr. Loewen, the outgoing president of the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association, became a member of the town planning board 16 years ago. This month, Mr. Loewen was elected to the town board.

"Cathy, with her husband, Tom, represented one of the strongest, best traditions in the baymen's community - living with the environment and from the environment. She was an outstanding, insightful person," Arnold Leo, the secretary of the baymen's association and a longtime friend, said Tuesday.

As a town trustee, Ms. Lester became involved in efforts to supplement the town's natural population of clams. She opposed the "relay" of clams from areas close to New York City to town waters because they were found to be contaminated with heavy metals.

Instead, she worked with the baymen's association and Democratic Supervisor Judith Hope's administration on ways to raise shellfish here. She supported the idea of allowing baymen to create small aquaculture projects, a departure from the association's strict opposition to aquaculture on public bottomland.

In 1985, shellfish populations were destroyed by the first in a series of brown algae blooms. Two years later, and in large part due to Ms. Lester's work, the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery was established on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk with the help of a $164,000 grant from Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's administration.

In 1987, Ms. Lester won a seat on the town board and continued to champion the preservation of open space, public access to the water, and protection of the town's harbors and bays. After two terms as councilwoman, she won the top position in town government in 1995.

Lisa Liquori, a former town planning director, who became friends with her at Town Hall, recalled that Ms. Lester was set to attend a conference upstate for new town supervisors when a snowstorm hit the East End and kept her in East Hampton. "She just had to learn the job as she was going, and she did," Ms. Liquori said Tuesday.

"I was always struck by Cathy. She would be in a room with a group of 'experts' and . . . she would ask the most relevant questions," Ms. Liquori said. Ms. Lester never graduated from high school, but earned her high school equivalency diploma in 1977. "She was a very bright woman, and would just put her knowledge together in a way that I was constantly impressed," Ms. Liquori said.

"She has truly left her mark," said Town Councilwoman Debra Foster, a friend. "If it weren't for Cathy Lester we wouldn't recognize our Northwest Woods in East Hampton. They would be totally developed."

"People always said, 'She knows what's below the surface and what's above it,' " Ms. Ryan said Tuesday. Yet, despite having attained the highest elected office in town, Ms. Lester considered herself neither a leader nor a politician, Ms. Ryan said.

In 1999, Ms. Lester lost a third bid for town supervisor. She had served in public office for 15 years and said at the time that she had no intention of returning to government work. Instead, she earned her real estate license, began working for Allan M. Schneider Associates, and became a Democratic committeewoman.

Ms. Lester battled liver cancer in 2004, but it was rare for her to talk about her health, Ms. Liquori said. "She was just so strong that we forgot she was sick."

Ms. Lester is survived by her daughter, Della Bennett of Southampton, and two sisters, Dorothy Giacoia of South Carolina and Gail Wienclawski of Southampton. Her husband died in 1992.

The family will receive visitors at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton from 7 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 23, and from 2 to 4 p.m. on Friday. A service will be held at the funeral home on Friday from 7 to 9 p.m. Ms. Lester is to be cremated.

Memorial contributions have been suggested to the East Hampton Trails Presevation Society, The Baymen's Association, or the Springs Fire Department.

With Reporting by Russell Drumm.

Toward the end of every monthly Sag Harbor Village Board meeting, Ed Gregory, a board member and longtime volunteer with the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps, reads the corps' monthly report into the record.

The report includes the man-hours for the month, the number of emergency calls, training sessions, trips to the hospital, and nights worked - all routine information that village officials need to know, and that taxpayers often take for granted.

Then, in Mr. Gregory's most disappointed voice, a monotone, he relays the bad news: The ambulance corps has lost another member.

"Please be advised that the following member is to be removed from the insurance rolls," Mr. Gregory has said at every meeting for close to a year.

Elderly, lifelong volunteers are not retiring. They aren't dying at regular monthly intervals. The corps in Sag Harbor is simply losing members because of the circumstances of the times. Eleven of them have resigned in the past year.

"They're dropping out and moving away," Mr. Gregory has told the board. He checks off the names month after month: Phillip Logue in November, Lisa Maffucci and William J. Young II in October. The list goes on.

The math is simple. If 11 members have left in recent months, and the corps has gained only one new member, the volunteer organization is at a loss. Averaging 600 calls a year, the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps cannot afford to lose more members. They are down to 22.

Eddie Downes, the corps' president, and Missie Mahoney, the vice president, are worried. Yet they remain optimistic about the low enrollment, which Mr. Downes called "uncommon."

"Membership hasn't been this low since I joined, and that's 18 years ago," he said. The organization's rolls once topped out at 32, he said. With 2,300 residents and 27 square miles to cover in the Sag Harbor Fire District, 22 members seems awfully low.

Mr. Downes said he believes the loss of membership is "symptomatic of what's happening all over Long Island. . . . People are having to work two or three jobs just to get by." There aren't enough hours in a day to allow people who are struggling to support a family to volunteer, he said.

Many of the recently resigned volunteers have moved away to the north shore of the Island and to the South. "Anywhere that's cheaper to live," Ms. Mahoney said, people are flocking to. Those who can afford the East End's pricey real estate are either second-home owners and part-time residents or too busy to volunteer, she added.

Although Mr. Downes and Ms. Mahoney's take on the situation may hold true in Sag Harbor, the East Hampton Ambulance Association has not been hurt in the same way.

"We've lost as many members as we've gained," said Susie Dayton, the ambulance association's chief. Her organization boasts 40 members, "but we could always use more." They average 1,000 calls a year in the East Hampton Fire District.

The Sag Harbor corps' leaders recognize that, as with most volunteer organizations, there are lulls and peaks. "We're at the down side of the turnover," Ms. Mahoney said.

She said she hopes for a "great rush" of volunteers soon. "We can only get better with more volunteers and more experience."

Of the 22 Sag Harbor volunteers, 16 are certified emergency medical technicians, and three are certified in advanced life support. Unlike in East Hampton, Sag Harbor volunteers do not have to be certified E.M.T.s to join the corps, but they do have to become certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The Sag Harbor corps offers E.M.T. and C.P.R. training at its headquarters.

The Sag Harbor corps is "one of the ambulance companies you look up to," said Tom Field, an instructor and volunteer with the Amagansett Ambulance Company. "It has to do with the training they do. The volunteers spend a lot of time."

There was a time when Sag Harbor Village got by with just two volunteers, although there were far fewer residents then. John A. Schoen founded the Sag Harbor Ambulance Corps 73 years ago as a company of one. He was later joined by Edmund M. Downes, the current president's grandfather. Together, the "two helped anyone that would help," according to the corps' own two-page history.

With no classes to train volunteers how to care for patients, the corps was a "load-and-go operation." If someone needed to go to the hospital, Mr. Schoen was the man to call.

"When a call came into John's house . . . he would make phone calls to other people that might be willing to go with him for a ride, to assist the patients to the hospital," the corps' history says. "Many of times, back then, John would ask whomever he met on the street to go with him!"

In 1982, the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps was incorporated, with 27 members. There were just 200 calls a year then.

In its infancy, meetings were held "wherever," Mr. Downes said.

"Supplies were kept in a closet on the third floor of the Municipal Building" on Main Street, "and at one point they were kept in a closet on the second floor of the Division Street police building," the history states.

The corps got its first building, behind the Brick Kiln Road firehouse, in 1992. It is dedicated to the corps' founder.

At village board meetings, Mr. Gregory uses his position to put out the word that the ambulance corps is in desperate need. Ms. Mahoney and Mr. Downes have sat at tables set up on Main Street to try to get residents to join - usually unsuccessfully.

The incentives to do so, however, include a retirement program after five years are vested, and a rewards program for taking part in a certain number of calls.

Also, it "goes without saying" that it feels great to volunteer, Mr. Downes said. "We're like a little family. Most of the people we take to the hospital we know."

There are other, smaller perks, such as good meals at the monthly meetings and at training sessions, and free sweatshirts. "It doesn't seem like a lot, until you don't have to worry about a $50 sweatshirt during the winter," Ms. Mahoney said.

Ms. Mahoney and Mr. Downes have found another way to reward their fellow volunteers: a tank of gas for every 50 calls responded to. And with an average tank of gas on the East End at around $2.70 a gallon, that incentive might not be so small.