'Faces Places' Kicks off New Hamptons Film Festival Series
The Hamptons International Film Festival and Guild Hall are collaborating on a series of film screenings, beginning on Saturday nights this month.
The series, which starts by taking advantage of the number of visual arts-related films out this year, helps fill the void left by the Sag Harbor Cinema, which was destroyed by a fire last winter. Called “Now Showing” and presented at Guild Hall, it will consist of the type of art house fare that was typically seen at the theater.
The screenings will start on Saturday with “Faces Places,” a documentary by Agnes Varda. Shown at Cannes and the New York Film Festival, the film captures travel through villages in France with the filmmaker and the French artist JR.
On Dec. 23, “The Square,” Ruben Ostlund’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning film, will take audiences through a mind-bending and sometimes harrowing morality play about the hell created by good intentions. All of its screenings at HIFF in October sold out. Elizabeth Moss and Dominic West are two of the supporting cast members in the Swedish film, which has dialogue mostly in English.
“Loving Vincent,” which has received many accolades for its inventive approach to an artist’s biography, is an animated film using 65,000 frames of oil paintings on canvas specially created by 115 artists in Vincent van Gogh’s style. Written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, it will be screened on Dec. 30.
“We are kicking off this series with some of the most artistic and daring films this year,” Anne Chaisson, the festival’s director, said in a release. She added that it has long been an audience request that the festival continue offering screenings after the official October event.
“We live in a film-savvy community, but many of the best new releases never make it to our theaters,” Andrea Grover, the executive director of Guild Hall, said.
The screenings will start at 6 p.m. Tickets cost $15, or $12 for HIFF and Guild Hall members. Additional screenings will be announced in the coming weeks at hamptonsfilmfest.org. Tickets can be purchased online at guildhall.org.