The Sag Harbor Cinema will pivot from a program of short films by Long Island filmmakers to a riveting documentary about the 1964 Venice Biennale and the United States agenda of fighting Communism with culture, to a groundbreaking 1977 documentary about the then-emerging gay rights movement.
Set for tomorrow at 6 p.m., “Sound Visions” will feature five films ranging from narrative to experimental to documentary. Directed by Daniel Fermin Pfeffer and Carlos Cardona, “Dreams & Schemes” is about two aging rappers who are kicked off a regional music tour and forced to find a way to come up with overdue rent money.
“The Pedestrian,” directed by Nora DeLigter and Claire Read, follows Alex Wolfe on a 150-mile walk from Levittown to the Hamptons that involved a stretch on the Long Island Expressway.
Shot on black-and-white Super 8 and 35mm still film, Ben Kujawski’s “Empty House” is a personal poem made after a visit to his family’s foreclosed home, which had been abandoned for years.
Sam Hamilton’s “Sag Harbor Stories: Variety Store” is a two-minute portrait of Lisa Field, owner of the venerable Main Street store, who reflects on the business’s legacy in the community.
Ethan Mermelstein had this to say about his film “Dad Swap,” a personal and comedic perspective on the relationship between a Long Island family and their self-absorbed filmmaker son: “My dad is a dick, so I swap him out with a new one.”
The filmmakers will discuss their work following the screening.
A lot has been written over the years about the U.S. government’s weaponization of culture during the Cold War. “Taking Venice,” a new documentary by Amei Wallach, an art critic, television commentator, and filmmaker, uncovers the true story behind rumors that the government and insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale so that their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the top prize.
The plan involved Alice Denney, a Washington insider and friend of the Kennedys; Alan Solomon, an ambitious curator she recommended to organize the American entry, and Leo Castelli, a powerful New York art dealer.
Alissa Wilkinson, writing in The New York Times, called the film “a tale of Americans crashing what had been a European party in a moment when American optimism was at its height. Artists like Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, John Chamberlain, and Jasper Johns were making work that exploded ideas about what a painting should be and do.”
“For all the gripping atmosphere of international intrigue supported by great archival footage, ‘Taking Venice’ also offers a subtle understanding of Rauschenberg’s conflicted point of view and of the reverberations that the 1964 Biennale would have on the art world at large,” says Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the cinema’s artistic director.
Ms. Wallach is uniquely qualified to tell the story. As an art writer, she watched Rauschenberg make prints in New York and paintings in Captiva, Fla., and her articles have appeared in Art in America, ARTNews, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. She has also directed films about Louise Bourgeois and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.
The film, presented in collaboration with The Church in Sag Harbor, will be shown Sunday at 6 p.m. A conversation among Ms. Wallach, Ms. Vallan, and Sheri Pasquarella, executive director of The Church, will follow the screening.
“Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives” was the first feature-length documentary about lesbian and gay identity to be made by gay filmmakers. In celebration of Pride Month, the cinema will screen the film next Thursday at 6 p.m. and host Rob Epstein, who directed it, along with Peter Adair, Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Lucy Massie Phenix, and Veronica Selver.
In 2022, “Word Is Out” was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
