Award To Pakula Will Cap Festival
The film-making career of Alan J. Pakula, the contributions of women to the world of motion pictures, and the collaborative process of making a film all will receive special emphases at this year's Hamptons International Film Festival, which begins on Wednesday evening with an opening screening and party.
As has been the practice in the past, the festival will hold a day of free screenings on Oct. 21, the day after the last film and the closing-night party.
More details of the fourth annual festival were released this week. Tickets for individual movies and other events go on sale today at the festival's box office. The official guide to the six-day event can be found inside today's Star and will be inserted again next Thursday.
Award To Director
Mr. Pakula, who with his wife, Hannah, has an East Hampton house, will be honored on Oct. 19 with the festival's Distinguished Achievement Award. The first film he ever directed, "The Sterile Cuckoo," starring Liza Minelli and Wendell Burton, will be shown following the ceremony.
After spending 12 years producing such notable films as "To Kill A Mockingbird," Mr. Pakula turned his talents to directing. He was at the helm of "All the President's Men," "Sophie's Choice," "Comes A Horseman," "Presumed Innocent," "Klute," "Starting Over," and "The Pelican Brief," among others.
"In a cinematic climate where morality is often discarded in favor of what will sell, Alan J. Pakula's films have always been about compassion in the face of human frailty, and commercialism has not been his concern," observes a release.
Archival Films
The director is said to be particularly adept at telling complicated, emotional stories, bringing the viewer close to his protagonists, and knowing just the right place to put the camera.
Mr. Pakula is currently finishing "The Devil's Own," starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt. Some scenes were filmed on the North Fork this summer.
The 6 p.m. award presentation and screening of "The Sterile Cuckoo" will be held at Guild Hall in East Hampton.
Each year the Film Festival shows several archival and restored films, to point up the importance of protecting footage from vanished eras, films that would otherwise disappear - and are disappearing.
The three films chosen this year are different in tone and topic, but together they focus on the contributions women have made to cinema, whether in front of the camera or behind.
The silent classic "The Siren of the Tropics," starring Josephine Baker, will be introduced at its screening next Thursday night by Jean-Claude Baker, one of the extraordinary performer's adopted children, who lives in East Hampton.
Set in a forest 10 miles from Paris, the film follows the story of a vivacious Antillean beauty (Ms. Baker) who rescues a clueless hero from the machinations of an evil marquis.
So far as is known, this will be only the fifth showing of "The Siren of the Tropics" since its 1929 American release. The screening, which was underwritten by the Jean-Claude Baker Foundation, will be accompanied by a live performance of a piano piece written specifically for the film.
"Siren" has been completely restored.
Ida Lupino's "Hitch-Hiker"
The actress-turned-director Ida Lupino, a woman ahead of her time, directed a number of films in the 1950s. Her fifth one, "The Hitch-Hiker," said to be the only classic film noir directed by a woman, will be shown on Friday, Oct. 18. It tells the story of a psychotic murderer with a facial deformity who hitches rides and then kills the drivers.
The movie, which has no female characters, is nevertheless "an excellent example of Lupino's feminist, pioneering directorial spirit," says the festival committee.
"The Hitch-Hiker" will be presented by the American Museum of the Moving Image, based in Astoria, as a preview of its upcoming Ida Lupino retrospective next month.
"Born Yesterday"
The comedienne Judy Holliday won a best-actress Oscar for her role as Billie Dawn in "Born Yesterday," which will be shown on Oct. 19 as part of the festival's archival presentation.
Directed by George Cukor, the film is set in Washington, D.C., where the dim Billie Dawn is the mistress of a millionaire junk dealer. He finds her unsophisticated ways a social liability, and hires a reporter to be her tutor.
Ultimately, she takes to her lessons, and the millionaire, played by Broderick Crawford, finds that Alexander Pope was right: "A little learning is a dangerous thing."
Recently remade starring Melanie Griffith and also parodied in "The Girl Can't Help It," the original
"Born Yesterday" is still the funniest, the festival maintains. It has been preserved by Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film and Video, which will present a Judy Holliday film retrospective in December.
Collaboration
"Film: A Collaborative Art" will be the theme of four panel discussions during the Film Festival, all to be held at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. The panels include directors and a sampling of the artists with whom they work: cinematographers, screenwriters, editors, and composers.
The first, next Thursday, will focus on "The Look: Directors and Cinematographers," or directors of photography, who together address such important film-making issues as camera placement, movement, and angles.
Serving as moderator will be David Schwartz, the chief curator of film and video at the American Museum of the Moving Image, who programs the museum's annual "Masters of Cinematography" series.
Capturing The Look
Panelists scheduled are Matt Mahurin, a former photographer whose directorial debut, "Mugshot," is featured in the festival's American Independents Showcase; Fred Murphy, a cinematographer for nearly 30 years whose credits include "The Trip to Bountiful," "The Dead," and "Murder in the First"; Maryse Alberti, an up-and-coming director of photography with the documentary "Crumb" already to his credit, and Steven Soderbergh, whose directorial debut was "sex, lies and videotape," winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
Mr. Soderbergh's two new films, "Gray's Anatomy" and "Schizopolis," are in this year's Hamptons International Film Festival.
Telling The Story
"The Story: Directors and Screenwriters," on Friday, Oct. 18, will be moderated by Tod Lippy, the editor of Scenario magazine. Among the panelists are Jay Chandrasekhar and Kevin Heffernan, members of a cutting-edge comedy troupe called Broken Lizard
The troupe, using improvisational methods, wrote the feature film "Puddle Cruiser," which is included in the Film Festival and marks Mr. Chandrasekhar's directorial debut.
Other panelists will be Terry George and Jim Sheridan, longtime collaborators who together wrote "Some Mother's Son," the festival's opening-night film. Mr. George directed "Some Mother's Son," his first venture into directing.
The pair also collaborated in writing the Academy Award-nominated "In The Name of the Father," directed by Mr. Sheridan, who made his directorial bow with "My Left Foot."
Putting It Together
"Putting It All Together: Directors and Editors" will be moderated by George T. Nierenberg, a veteran producer and director of documentaries who is on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The panelists include Anthony Harvey, who was an editor of "Dr. Strangelove," among other films, and a director of such films as "The Lion in Winter."
Marshall and Nina Brickman will also be panelists. Mr. Brickman is best known as a screenwriter but he has directed three films (all of them edited by his wife), including "The Manhattan Project."
Adriani Trigiani and Rachel DeSario, the director and editor, respectively, of "Queens of the Big Times," fill out the panel. Their documentary will have its world premiere at the festival.
The Sound
Finally, "The Sound: Directors and Composers" will be moderated by Randall Poster, a music supervisor with many notable credits including "Kids," "I Shot Andy Warhol," and "The Pallbearer."
The panelists are Carter Burwell, a composer whose credits include "Waterland," "Kalifornia," and "Rob Roy"; Danny Leiner, who has directed two short films and will make his feature-length directorial debut next week with "Layin' Low," and Evan Lurie, who has composed for theater, television, dance, and film, including the music for "Layin' Low."
Though the fourth Hamptons International Film Festival does not begin until Wednesday night, it will kick off on Tuesday, as in the past, with a welcoming cocktail party sponsored by the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the James Lane Cafe at the Hedges Inn.
Twenty-five dollar tickets to the party include an open bar, hors d'oeuvres, music by the Brill-Gaffney Trio, and a chance to meet many of those associated with the festival.