Fest Honors Master of Masters

   The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will return to Sag Harbor this weekend with three days of programming and a gala honoring Susan Lacy, the creator of the “American Masters” series on PBS.

   Ms. Lacy has served as executive producer for more than 185 documentaries made through this series, which has received 64 Emmy nominations and 24 wins, along with many other awards. She has also written and directed several of them. Subjects have included Johnny Carson, Placido Domingo, Buckminster Fuller, Judy Garland, Lillian Gish, Lena Horne, Joni Mitchell, Edward R. Murrow, Rod Serling, Paul Simon, and Tennessee Williams. The latest film in the series, on David Geffen, began airing on Nov. 20.

   The gala will include a screening of “Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note,” which, according to the organizers, is Ms. Lacy’s favorite film. The film won an Emmy Award and was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. After the screening, she and three American Masters directors will be part of a panel discussion. The directors are Michael Eptstein, Anne Makepeace, and Roger Sherman. Tickets to the gala, which will be held at Bay Street Theatre, cost $25.

    The screenings will begin tomorrow from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. at Bay Street and cost $15 each or $100 for a festival pass to all events. The first film, Ian Cheney’s “The City Dark,” about light pollution, will be free of charge and includes footage of Montauk and a follow-up discussion with Susan Harder, a Dark Skies advocate.

    Screening tomorrow at 6:45 p.m. will be “Long May You Shine” by Mark Costello Higgins, about the Long Beach Bar Lighthouse in Greenport. At 8:15 p.m., “Shelter Island: Art + Friendship + Discovery” will be shown. The film, by Mike Canzoniero, is about an outsider artist and gas station owner on Shelter Island.

    Saturday’s films include three student shorts in the morning and “The Wind That Blows,” an hour-long film about Yankee whalers in the West Indies by Tom Weston, beginning at 10 a.m. At 12:15 p.m., a film about Long Island commercial fishermen, “The Salt of the Sea” by Tom Garber of Hampton Bays, will be shown along with “Shinnecock: Remember the Past, Hope for the Future,” a short film by a Ross School student about the tribe’s tradition of storytelling. At 2 p.m. “Kings Park: Stories from an American Mental Institution” will be shown. The two-hour film by Lucy Winer revisits a now-abandoned site where the filmmaker was once committed. The short films “After” by Jeremy Cohan and “Irene Williams: Queen of Lincoln Road” by Eric Smith will be shown at 4:30 p.m.

    On Sunday, six films will be screened from 10 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. The day begins with “Children of Chabannes” by Lisa Gossels and Dean Wetherell, the story of 400 Jewish refugee children who were saved by a French village during World War II. “Deputized-Como Pudo Pasar?” by Sue Hagedorn and Amanda Zinoman revisits the killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant, by a group of Long Island teenagers. It will be shown at 1 p.m. “Harry Hellfire,” at 3:30 p.m., is the story of a great unknown rock musician who lives in a tent in Greenport. Jim Morrison is the director. “Courting Justice” by Ruth B. Cowan, to be shown at 5:30 p.m., looks at South African justices who are in charge of guarding human rights. “Right There,” a short film by Florence Buchanan and Arthur Bijur, follows.

    The closing film, at 7:30 p.m., is “Plimpton: Starring George Plimpton as Himself.” The film by Luke Poling and Tom Bean and co-edited by Casey Brooks of East Hampton looks at the life of the multitasking editor, writer, and society fixture.

    Each film has a scheduled discussion afterward led by Andrew Botsford on Friday and Sunday and Bonnie Grice on Saturday.

    Jacqui Lofaro of Bridgehampton, who is the founder and director of the festival, said in a release that the festival had grown dramatically since last year. “We’ve tripled the number of festival days and doubled the number of documentary film screenings.” The festival will also present an audience award for the first time.

    Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance at ht2ff.com and the Bay Street box office.