Revamped Festival Announces Changes
The Hamptons International Film Festival is spreading its wings. The festival, scheduled to open on Oct. 15 with a premiere and big party, will occur at the Sag Harbor Cinema and the Westhampton Performing Arts Center this year, as well as at the East Hampton Cinema and Guild Hall as before.
Also new will be three films by three international directors at different stages in their careers; Subversive Cinema, late-night screenings of three dark-natured films; other possible changes to festival venues; changes to the short film programming; a new corporate sponsor, and perhaps more awards.
The additional venues will allow more people to see the films with the largest ticket demands, as well as allow the festival to add to the number of films it shows, bringing this year's total to 65 or 66, Stephen Gallagher, program director, said. The full lineup is not expected to be finalized until the end of the week.
Quite A Number
"Things change every day," he said. But, he promised, "we have a really strong lineup."
One insider surmised this week that the festival was reluctant to announce its selections until the Sundance Film Festival, the country's premier festival, had done so. It is expected to inform filmmakers chosen for inclusion this week. Sundance will not accept any films that have been shown at other festivals.
About 650 feature length and short films, not including student films, were submitted for this year's festival, Mr. Gallagher said, the highest number ever. Among them are three chosen for a new category of films, Subversive Cinema, which will be shown once in East Hampton and again in Sag Harbor.
One of these films is "Funny Games," a contemporary Austrian film about a family terrorized by two Austrian men who call themselves variously Tom and Jerry and Beavis and Butthead. The film "both revels in and condemns . . . [television] violence," Mr. Gallagher said.
"Pan-Hamptons"
The other two are the English film "Preaching to the Perverted," about a politician in an election year who sends a young aide into a fetish club he wants to close down, and "Killer Condom," an American film noir shot by Germans in New York.
The scheduling of films as far afield as Westhampton will allow the festival to be "pan-Hamptons," Mr. Gallagher said, adding that festival organizers hope to attract more film-goers than in the past.
There are other possible changes in venues. The Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor may no longer be the site of panel discussions, since its distance from the festival's epicenter in the Village of East Hampton makes it difficult for festival staffers to attend.
The tent under which opening and closing night parties and other events take place may not be set up in the parking lot of Nick and Toni's restaurant on North Main Street in East Hampton, either. A bigger field that can accommodate a bigger tent is hoped for, Mr. Gallagher said, noting that ticket sales to these events could be increased and the tent could be sectioned off for use for other festival functions.
With "far fewer" high-quality short film submissions this year, the festival will screen one of the 10 short films selected before each of the 10 independent American features competing for the Golden Starfish award.
Picking the winner of the Golden Starfish award will be Anouk Aimee, the French film star, A.M. Homes, the novelist, the actress Rosie Perez, and the two winners of last year's Golden Starfish award: Matt Mahurin, the director of "Mug Shot," and Jay Chandrasekhar, the director of "Puddle Cruiser."
Inviting past winners back as jurors is a tradition the festival hopes to start this year, Mr. Gallagher said.
Lifetime Sponsor
Two autonomous programs of shorts will be scheduled as well, one titled "Cartoon Noir" and another, as yet untitled, that will highlight shorts done by or for women.
The women's shorts segment is being sponsored by a new festival sponsor, Lifetime Television for Women, which is considering giving an award for the film that best addresses women's issues, Mr. Gallagher said. As part of Lifetime's sponsorship, he added, the festival will include a special screening of Lee Grant's "Say It, Fight It, Cure It," a Lifetime film about breast cancer.
Making this year's Contemporary International Cinema feature different from past festivals' will be a special tribute to Sogetel, Spain's largest film production company, and the Three-by-Three program. Six films that were produced or co-produced by Sogetel will be featured on one day of the festival.
Spanish Films
In addition, three films directed by the Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem, and produced by Sogetel, are slated to be included in Three-by-Three, though Mr. Medem's participation was not confirmed by Monday. The Three-by-Three program will showcase three films by each of three filmmakers that are not well-known to American viewers in what Mr. Gallagher termed "mini tributes."
Each trio will include the filmmaker's most recent project as well as two from earlier in their careers.
Three-by-Three serves two purposes, Mr. Gallagher said: "One is to introduce terrific international directors to the American public," and the second is to show how filmmakers and their styles have changed during their careers.
Documentary Jury
Also to be highlighted in Three-by-Three are the Argentinian filmmaker Alejandro Agresti, and Nicolas Phillibert, a French documentarian whose most recent film, "Every Little Thing," will also compete for the festival's juried best documentary award. The film is about the residents of an insane asylum outside Paris, rehearsing a play written by an absurdist theater director, Mr. Gallagher said.
The documentary film award jury will include R.J. Cutler, the producer of "The War Room" and director of "Perfect Candidate": Robert Hawk, the associate producer of "Chasing Amy"; Bill Greaves, a veteran documentary filmmaker whose most recent project was "Ida B. Wells: Passion for Justice"; Ian Birnie, who heads the film department at the Los Angeles County Museum, and Renee Tajima-Tena, a documentary film director who most recently made "My America."
Student Submissions
Meanwhile, student film submissions for this year's festival continued to roll in on Monday, the deadline day, and this year's entries are different from those of the past: They have come not just from American students but from such places as Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia.
That the festival had opened submissions to international film students this year was not widely publicized. However, the number of submissions continued to be in the area of 150 said Jeremiah Newtown, co-founder of the festival's student awards program.
As in past years, monetary awards will be given to the five undergraduate and five graduate film students picked as the cream of this year's crop. The jury, which will meet next week to screen the films, will include Candy Clarke, an actress, Gill Holland, a producer whose latest film, "Hurricane Streets," is expected soon, and Gerald Dolezar, a music representative and short film producer.
The quality of the student films continued to be "very good" this year, Mr. Newtown said. The only problem, he added, was that "the students are making longer films." The logistics of having to fit five films into each of two one-and-one-half or two-hour segments is not easy, he said, when some of the films are as long as 60 minutes each.
"I get a lot of calls from high school students saying, 'What about our films?' " Mr. Newtown said this week. "And they're right."
More Awards?
The festival may expand the number of awards given, the program director added, and jurors may be given the freedom to recognize more films and actors as they see fit. This year will be the first that an award for the film with the best original score will be given; last year, the jury declined to award the brand-new honor.
There are even more possible changes for Hamptons International Film Festivals of the future, Mr. Gallagher said this week. The possibilities include screenings at the Movie at Montauk and the Southampton Theater, script readings at a place like the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, and a category for films made by high school students.
Mr. Gallagher said the media were showing increased interest in the festival this year, as well, perhaps because filmmakers are turning to the smaller regional festivals like this one, where films have a better chance of being noticed and recognized.
The festival will run through Oct. 19 and is expected to end, as it has in the past, with a free day of films on Oct. 20.