Doc Fest to Honor Alex Gibney, ‘American Masters’

Cyber warfare, animal rights, East End artists, and Maya Angelou are a few of the more than 20 subjects explored by filmmakers during the 11th annual Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, which opens today at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater and runs through Sunday evening.

This year’s career achievement award winner is Alex Gibney, whose 28 documentaries have won an Academy Award, five Emmys, and several Peabodys, among other honors. Mr. Gibney shies away from no subject, having tackled Edward Snowden, Enron, Scientology, Wikileaks, and, in his most recent film, “Zero Days,” Stuxnet, the self-replicating computer malware used by the United States and Israel to destroy part of an Iranian nuclear facility.

Mr. Gibney will be honored on Saturday, starting at 7 p.m. with a cocktail buffet, continuing with opening remarks and the award presentation at 8, the screening of “Zero Days” at 8:30, and concluding with a discussion of the film between Ron Simon of the Paley Center for Media and Mr. Gibney.

A tribute to “American Masters,” the groundbreaking PBS series launched by Susan Lacy in 1986, features the screening tomorrow of two new productions from the series, “Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future” and “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise.” After the Saarinen film, which will be shown at 6 p.m., awards will be presented to Ms. Lacy and Michael Kantor, the series’ current executive producer, who will discuss it afterward with Susan Margolin of St. Marks Productions.

The directors of “Maya Angelou,” Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack, will hold a question-and-answer session after the 8:30 screening of their film.

The opening and closing night films feature documentaries by filmmakers from the East End whose paths first crossed 50 years ago. Lana Jokel, whose film “A Moment in Time: Hamptons Artists” will be shown tonight at 8, met the pioneering cinema verité filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker at Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan soon after he had finished “Don’t Look Back,” his film of Bob Dylan’s 1965 England concert tour. Mr. Pennebaker hired her, and she learned her craft working for him.

“Unlocking the Cage,” which will screen Sunday at 7:30 p.m., is the latest film from Mr. Pennebaker and his longtime partner, Chris Hegedus. The film follows the attempt of the animal rights lawyer Steve Wise to secure limited legal rights for cognitively complex animals, such as chimpanzees. Liddy Stein, an attorney, will lead a discussion with the filmmakers after the screening.

“A Moment in Time” consists of interviews with 12 East End artists, among them John Alexander, April Gornik, Sven Lukin, Audrey Flack, and John Chamberlain. A wine reception will precede the film, and a discussion with Ms. Jokel and featured artists will follow.

The festival will kick off this morning at 10:30 with its Young Voices program, which is open only to participating middle and high schools. Two shorts, “Next Medal” and “Brendan Gallagher: Always a General” will be followed by a workshop for students on using film to create impact and change.

The Young Voices program will be followed by “Hearing Is Believing,” the story of a girl born prematurely without eyesight, who began studying at the Southern California Conservatory of Music at the age of 4; “Saving Jamaica Bay,” a documentary about a community that cleaned up and restored a national wildlife refuge after Hurricane Sandy, and “Mirrors to Windows: The Artist as Woman,” a portrait of 10 diverse female artists from six countries.

“Bang! The Bert Berns Story,” the first program tomorrow, is about the legendary R&B songwriter of such hits as “Twist and Shout” and “Piece of My Heart.” It will be followed by “Beauty and the Beer,” a documentary about the Miss Rheingold beauty contest directed by a 1960 finalist; “Do Not Resist,” an examination of the militarization of policing by the son of a Michigan police officer, and “Uncle Gloria: One Helluva Ride,” the story of a 67-year-old macho homophobe who hides from the law as a woman during a nasty divorce before eventually undergoing a sex-change operation and becoming a transgender activist.

“Pele, My Paradise,” the story of a remote Pacific island devastated by a natural disaster, will lead off on Saturday at 11 a.m. along with “Art and Heart, The World of Isaiah Sheffer,” a portrait of the founder of New York’s Symphony Space. Other programs are “Obit,” about the obituary writers of The New York Times; “Pickle,” a short film about a couple’s bad luck with rescue animals, which will be paired with “Nadia Comaneci: The Gymnast and the Dictator,” a first-person narration from the memoirs of the Olympian gymnast; and “Life, Animated,” the story of an autistic boy whose family discovered an unusual way to communicate with him.

The festival’s final day will begin with “One Big Home,” the story of one man’s crusade against outsized houses on Martha’s Vineyard. It will be followed by “In Search of Israeli Cuisine,” an odyssey with the acclaimed chef Michael Solomonov; “Uncle Howard,” a portrait of the filmmaker Howard Brookner, who work captured the cultural revolution of the late 1970s and whose life was cut short by AIDS, and “Command and Control,” a documentary about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal.

Tickets to each film are $15, $13 for senior citizens; $25 for the “American Masters” awards program; $50 for the Saturday night buffet and award ceremony, and $150 for a pass for all films and events.