Connections: Freeze Frame

Trying to explain why I like the film festival so much, I came up with a backstory: The Star was among the first public voices to welcome its arrival in East Hampton in 1993. Many year-round residents were wary that first year, fearing the festival would bring traffic snarls and unwelcome crowds of gawkers, possibly even harming local businesses.

Like others, Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., the village mayor then as now, was cautious about the introduction of an annual event that might push summer’s hassles into the relative peace of October. Mr. Rickenbach didn’t want East Hampton to turn into Hollywood East. “How much can the village of East Hampton saturate itself with?” we quoted him asking. When it was all over, he said he was more optimistic but was reserving judgment and wanted to “hear a post-festival critique on what exactly was the economic impact in the village.”

The Star praised Joyce Robinson, Naomi Lazard, and a few other forward-thinking individuals who inaugurated the festival. In an editorial titled “Break a Leg” — before the festivities began, lo those 23 festivals ago — we wrote there was “every reason to expect the festival will be a humdinger.”

In the end, it didn’t end up blocking traffic or annoying townspeople, and it stirred up only two political brouhahas: One was about the Town of East Hampton’s giving it $10,000 (Supervisor Tony Bullock defended the gift); and the other about sculptures of a giant fly and smiling duck that were rolled “up and down Main Street to promote the screening of a long-forgotten flick called ‘It’ll Have Blinking Eyes and a Moving Mouth.’ ” The mayor said the sculptures “were not indicative of what East Hampton is all about,” and the village administrator, Larry Cantwell, who is East Hampton Town supervisor today, found them to be a violation of the village sign ordinance and ordered them banished. He would probably laugh today reading that he said the village’s strict regulations “are what keep East Hampton from looking like 42nd Street.”

From the organizers’ and filmgoers’ point of view, the first festival was a “smash.” At least that’s what a Star headline said. The only reported gripe among audiences themselves was over a sneak preview of a movie that wasn’t revealed until the curtain went up; people were expecting something like “Shindler’s List” but got “Body Snatchers,” Abel Ferrara’s zombie thriller, instead.

The festival certainly scored big when Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese spoke at a packed Guild Hall seminar. “You take the audience through life and death, and bang! They come out on the other side,” Mr. Scorsese said.

Toni Ross, at the time president of the festival’s board of directors, was credited with its being an “inclusive event, not an exclusive one.” Four feature films and six shorts, all with local filmmakers, actors, and producers, were shown on the first day, and admission was free.

I chuckled with recognition when I noticed that The Star’s earliest news clippings about the festival were written by none other than Sarah Koenig, a reporter here that year, who more recently made us all proud as a member of Time magazine’s 100 most influential persons of 2015, as the co-creator and host of “Serial,” the wildly popular podcast in which she explored the guilt or innocence of a young man convicted of killing his girlfriend. (Sarah started here, and she has made journalistic history. Can someone get that plot green-lighted?)

A lot of things have changed in the 23 years since the film festival got going. Single film tickets have gone up about 100 percent, from $7 to $15 for adults, and the all-inclusive “Founders Pass” has gone up 50 percent, from $1,000 to $1,500. Prize money has grown, too.

Some 41 features and 30 shorts were screened at the first festival, compared with more than 140 films from 41 different countries this year. Filmgoers gathered in front of the East Hampton cinema before it opened on the first day in 1993, and banged on the door. Today, there are several ticket offices and tickets can be purchased online, but the line on the first day tickets were sold ran down the block.

As for movie stars, the festival is host to many, although you really wouldn’t know it from the lack of fuss and bother on Main Street.