Film Festival Gets New Cast

The Hamptons International Film Festival, conceived as a showcase for independent filmmakers and as a community-based, year-round organization, is taking on some high-powered board members and intends to make its presence felt in New York City.

The goal is to reinforce the festival's shaky financial base and to enhance its programming with corporate support.

"We are trying to expand the board with new blood and new ideas, new money and new sponsorship," said Stuart Match Suna, a vice chairman and head of Silvercup Studios. "We're looking beyond the existing sponsorship and keeping the focus on the South Fork because we want it to truly be an international film festival."

Four Nominees

Members of the board were to have voted by phone last night on four board nominees. Festival officers declined to name them, but said they were chosen for their corporate and/or professional connections.

The Star, however, learned the nominees were Claude Wasserstein, a journalist and filmmaker who has her own production company and is the wife of the financier Bruce Wasserstein, Michael Lynne, the head of New Line Cinema, Cindy Sulzberger, who is the daughter of the publisher of The New York Times, and Jonathan Canno, the owner of a paper bag manufacturing company.

All have part-time residences in East Hampton. Ms. Sulzberger expects to take a year-round job here as a teacher. Mr. Lynne is a second vice president of Guild Hall.

Changes On Top

The festival has, since its inception four years ago, been known as much for growing pains as for its artistic and popular successes. It lost its first two executive directors, its original artistic director, a subsequent program director, and both its founders.

Six of 18 board members quit in the last few months alone, and now Toni Ross has announced that she will step down as chairwoman after this year, although she said she would remain on the board. Ms. Ross is active in the new Hayground School and co-owner of Nick and Toni's restaurant and other businesses.

Among others who have left the board are Karen Fifer Ferry, wife of the Southampton Hospital president, who resigned two months ago. Ms. Ross said Mrs. Ferry resigned from four boards altogether, citing "too much on her plate." Tinka Topping of Sagaponack, who had been a vice chair, also left this year, as did Maria Pessino-Rothwell, Robert Sands, and Frank Yablans, all South Fork residents.

Searching For Balance

"We're trying to create a more balanced board. Some of our members bring money, some bring connections, some do the work on the committees, and some have wisdom in a particular field," said Ms. Ross.

Patricia M. Weeks, whose husband is a well-known documentary filmmaker, and Rodney Miller, the festival's first black board member, were the most recent arrivals to the board. Mr. Miller, like the festival's treasurer, Robert Wiesenthal, is on the board of First Boston, an investment bank.

Ms. Ross, who has been chairwoman since the first festival, in 1993, is the daughter of the late Steve Ross, who was the chairman of Time Warner, an early corporate sponsor. This week, she emphatically denied rumors that the festival would take a one-year hiatus to recover financially and, further, that its current executive director, Ken Tabachnick, was planning to leave.

Going Professional

The festival will go on in October, as it has for the past four years, but will become "more friendly to professional filmmakers," she said.

"From the inception, we intended to be fully operating year-round but that has turned out to be much harder and more costly than we anticipated," she said. However, she noted that this was the first year its East Hampton office, on Newtown Mews, had stayed open year-round, even if it had curtailed its hours.

Despite its funding problems, the festival hosted two well-attended screenings in East Hampton and Southampton this winter and a panel discussion of "Not in Our Town," a documentary about prejudice in a small town.

"If we had the funding, we could do the kinds of things we want to do," she said.

"Partnering"

"The festival clearly needs to find more financial support. I wouldn't deny that. Every nonprofit organization out there is finding it more difficult to fund itself. The climate for corporate underwriting has changed dramatically since we started up," Ms. Ross said.

Ms. Ross, who declined to discuss the dollars and cents, said this week that the board was looking to "bring the numbers down" by soliciting donations of services and equipment and "partnering with other organizations to make better use of the funds we do have."

She said the board had decided to work more out of Manhattan "since the organization is so tied to corporate underwriting, we need to have the presence there."

In addition to handing out $100,000 in prize money to student filmmakers and spotlighting their work, the festival has been a springboard for controversial projects, and Ms. Ross said she expected the programming would "continue to challenge the parameters of people's thinking."

Student Focus

Mr. Suna said the board had every intention of continuing its focus on students and planned to expand its connections with New York City film schools.

"We have some very creative ideas that we are still in the process of developing. . . . Some very good news will come out of this," Mr. Suna said.

Board members also noted there were plans to create a program for high-school students but no start-up date as yet.

Jeremiah Newton, an educational consultant to the festival from New York University's Institute of Film and Television at the Tisch School of the Arts, said the Hamptons Festival had given more money to student filmmakers than any other. He added that there were almost no festivals with a year-round mission.

Original Concept

Naomi Lazard, a poet, author, and screenwriter who founded the festival with Joyce Robinson in an office in Ms. Robinson's basement, said she quit the board days after the 1996 festival ended because she believed it was getting further away from its original mission, which she described as bringing "the best, the most interesting, independent, low-budget films here, with a year-round program of screenings and workshops for adults and children." Ms. Robinson quit several days before the first festival opened.

"For four years, I felt I had to struggle all the time to do that. . . . When we had no money, when it was all just a blue sky dream, that first summer we had three workshops of six weeks each," said Ms. Lazard.

"This organization requires a lot of good will and dedication. And aspiration to do the right thing, not to use it for other reasons, as a power base or a glamour trip. That would be so beside the point," said Ms. Lazard.

Other board members have said the mission Ms. Lazard and Ms. Robinson envisioned in 1992 may have been unrealistic.

"As any organization grows, its needs change and the interests of the board members change. . . . In the beginning, board members were a lot more hands-on, doing everything. That was what interested Naomi, but that is not ultimately what a board mem ber should be doing," said Ms. Ross.

The festival was seeded with a $10,000 donation from East Hampton Town, which has continued to make annual contributions, although not without controversy. Town Councilwoman Nancy McCaffrey, for example, has voted against doing so each year.

As to the general financing of the festival, its 1994 report to the state showed $526,000 in contributions, more than $76,000 in revenue, $554,500 in expenses, and a balance of nearly $44,000 at the end of the year.

Its 1995 filing, the most recent sent to Albany, showed an increase of more than $143,000 in support and revenue, but a considerable jump in expenses of nearly $206,000.