16th ANNUAL HAMPTONS DOC FEST SCREENS 30 FILMS OVER SEVEN DAYS, NOV. 30-DEC. 6
LIVE AT SAG HARBOR CINEMA & BAY STREET THEATER
Pennebaker Career Achievement Award to Matthew Heineman at Gala, Sat. Dec. 2
Hamptons Doc Fest celebrates its 16th year with an enlarged seven-day festival of 30 enlightening documentary films, screening November 30 to December 6 in Sag Harbor, at both the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater.
“Our 2023 documentary program promises you the power and experience of quality storytelling that surprises us, makes us think and feel, and connects us with wider ideas and concepts,” says Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest. “Plus the festival provides us as always with a festive, celebratory opening to the holiday season.”
Opening Night Film at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Nov. 30 features “In the Company of Rose” directed by James Lapine, about widow Rose Styron’s life with novelist William Styron, while Frank Marshall’s “Rather” about newscaster Dan Rather closes the festival at Bay Street Theater on Dec. 6.
The line-up includes films about artists, musicians, dancers, fashion and photography, nature and the environment, biography, history and human rights.
“Among the many award-winning films and talented filmmakers we have invited to our festival,” states Hamptons artistic director Karen Arikian, “we are honored to recognize the stellar career of Matt Heineman with our Pennebaker Career Achievement Award; Artemis Rising Foundation with our Impact Award to Regina K. Scully; and new this year, our Legacy Award, given posthumously to filmmaker Nancy Buirski. We are also thrilled to be showing Wim Wenders’ “Anselm”—shot in 3D—about artist Anselm Kiefer, as well as to warmly welcome master filmmaker James Ivory with his film “A Cooler Climate.”
An annual tradition, the festival also presents its Young Voices Program on Dec. 6 at Bay Street Theater to hundreds of local middle and high school students, where award-winning filmmaker Roger Sherman will conduct a hands-on workshop after the screening of a short film “Rocks 4 Sale!”
HAMPTONS DOC FEST AWARDS
Pennebaker Career Achievement Award to Matthew Heineman, Sat. Dec. 2, 6:30 p.m.
Hamptons Doc Fest presents the prestigious Pennebaker Career Achievement Award this year to Matthew Heineman for “tackling difficult and often hard-to-access subjects while addressing great social truths.”
The Awards Gala takes place on Saturday, December 2, at Bay Street Theater starting at 6:30 p.m. with a cocktail/buffet reception followed by the award presentation at 8 p.m. and the screening of his latest film “American Symphony” (2023, 100 min.). The award, sponsored by filmmaker Lana Jokel, will be presented by Jokel and Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker’s partner and co-filmmaker.
Heineman, though only 40 years old, is already an Academy Award-nominated and nine-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, who takes on large subjects—such as the war in Afghanistan (“Retrograde”), the drug war in Mexico (“Cartel Land”), ISIS in Syria (“City of Ghosts”), COVID (“The First Wave”) and the problems with healthcare (“Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare”). Heineman says you can “speak great social truths through the power of the documentary film.”
Among his many honors, “Cartel Land” was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2016 and won the Director’s Guild of America’s Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary Award. Heineman also received the Director’s Guild Award for “City of Ghosts,” becoming one of only three people to receive the prestigious honor twice.
The subject of the Heineman film “American Symphony” is composer and instrumentalist Jon Batiste, the former bandleader and musical director for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” who is also an 11-time Grammy-nominated and Album-of-the-Year winner in 2022 for his album “We Are.”
The documentary, which is considered a frontrunner for an Oscar nomination, follows Batiste as he prepares his original composition, “American Symphony,” for its premiere at Carnegie Hall at the same time his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, is undergoing medical treatment for her rare form of leukemia. “Variety” writer Clayton Davis has hailed the film as “quite possibly one of the best love stories seen on film in over two decades.”
The Pennebaker Award is named in honor of the late documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, a long-time Sag Harbor resident and pioneer in non-fiction film. Previous recipients in chronological order include Richard Leacock, Susan Lacy, Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, Barbara Kopple, Stanley Nelson, Alex Gibney, Liz Garbus, Sheila Nevins, Robert Kenner, Frederick Wiseman, Dawn Porter, and last year Sam Pollard.
HDF Art & Inspiration Award, a Spotlight Film, Thurs. Nov. 30, 5:30 p.m., Sag Harbor Cinema
Receiving this year’s Art & Inspiration Award and also honored as a HDF Spotlight Film is “Call Me Dancer” (2023, 84 min.), which will be shown at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Thursday, Nov. 30, at 5:30 p.m., followed by a live Q&A with its co-director Leslie Shampaine, a professional ballet dancer.
In this heart-warming, joyful film about the power of dance, co-directed by Shampaine and Pip Gilmour, Manish Chauhan, a young street dancer in Mumbai, India, yearns to become a professional dancer. He goes against his parents’ wishes and secretly attends an inner-city dance school in Mumbai, where he meets Yehuda, a curmudgeonly 70-year old Israeli teacher. Together they transform each other’s lives in this film, featuring music by Indian singers and composers.
Opening Night Film, Thurs., Nov. 30, 8 p.m., Sag Harbor Cinema
The Hamptons Doc Fest’s Opening Night Film, screening on Thursday, Nov. 30, 8 p.m. at Sag Harbor Cinema is “In the Company of Rose” (2023, 85 min.), which will be followed by a live Q&A with Tony Award-winning director James Lapine, a Zoom Q&A with Rose Styron, and also a cocktail reception.
Over six years of interviews on Martha’s Vineyard with Rose Styron, the widow of American novelist William Styron (“Lie Down in Darkness,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” “Sophie’s Choice”), James Lapine records the story of her complex life as a poet, journalist, and human rights activist during their 53-year marriage, and the many events they hosted in their home with Martha’s Vineyard luminaries including the Kennedys, Clintons, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and James Baldwin.
Some of Lapine’s many achievements include three Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical for “Into the Woods,” “Falsettos” and “Passion”; his direction of the Broadway play “Sunday in the Park with George”; and his documentary on Stephen Sondheim, “Six by Sondheim,” which won a Peabody Award. This Opening Night Film is sponsored by EPIC.
HDF Impact Award, Fri., Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m., Sag Harbor Cinema
Recipient of this year’s HDF Impact Award is Regina K. Scully, the founder of the Artemis Rising Foundation, dedicated to media projects that transform culture, for the film “Obsessed with Light” (2023, 90 min.). Co-presented with New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT), the film, directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, will be screened at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Friday, Dec. 1, at 7:30 p.m., followed by a live Q&A with NYWIFT executive director Cynthia Lopez and the two directors. A cocktail reception follows.
The film reveals the life of Loïe Fuller, a wildly original dancer, who combined dance, light and fabric, and was also an inventor who over a century ago pioneered and patented the creative use of electric lighting for the stage, used by rock stars of today.
Legacy Award Presented Posthumously to Nancy Buirski, Sun., Dec. 3, 2 p.m., Sag Harbor Cinema
The Hamptons Doc Fest’s first Legacy Award will be awarded posthumously to Nancy Buirski, a beloved documentary film festival director and filmmaker who passed away on August 29. The award will be presented by her co-HDF Advisory Board members Susan Margolin and Chris Hegedus to Buirski’s sister Judith Cohen at a tribute on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2 p.m. at the Sag Harbor Cinema, where her film “The Loving Story” (77 min.) will also be shown.
Buirski had established the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina in 1998 and later went on to direct six award-winning feature documentaries, including a trilogy exploring racial justice (“The Loving Story,” “The Rape of Racy Taylor,” “A Crime on the Bayou”) and most recently “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” in 2022.
“The Loving Story” recounts the story of Mildred and Richard Loving’s quest as an interracial couple to marry in the state of Virginia, leading to a historic Supreme Court decision outlawing anti-miscegenation laws.
HDF Human Rights Award, Tues., Dec. 5, 8 p.m. Bay Street Theater
Receiving this year’s HDF Human Rights Award will be director and Hamptons resident Heather Dune Macadam for her film “999: The Forgotten Girls of the Holocaust” (2023, 99 min.). It will screen at Bay Street Theater on Tuesday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m., followed by a live Q&A with Macadam, who is also the author of the critically-acclaimed book on which the film is based—“999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz,” which has been translated into 19 languages.
The film recounts the untold story of the first official Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz—the 999 teenage Jewish girls whom the Nazis ordered the Slovak government to send in the spring of 1942 to Auschwitz as a slave labor force. This film is sponsored by Leslie and Andrew Siben.
HDF Environmental Award, Wed., Dec. 6, 4:30 p.m. Bay Street Theater
“Deep Rising” (2023, 93 min.) is this year’s winner of the HDF Environmental Award, to be screened on Wed., Dec. 6, 4:30 p.m. at Bay Street Theater. Directed by Matthew Rytz, a visual anthropologist by training, the film represents a gripping tale of geopolitical, scientific and corporate intrigue that exposes the International Seabed Authority, a secretive organization that greenlights the massive extraction of metals from the deep seabed floor, thus destroying this last pristine environment for profit.
Closing Night Film, Wed., Dec. 6, 7 p.m. Bay Street Theater
Honored as the Hamptons Doc Fest’s Closing Night Film on Wed., Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. at Bay Street Theater will be “Rather” (2023, 95 min.) a documentary about journalist Dan Rather’s over 60-year career, covering some of the most seminal events in 20th century history, such as the Vietnam War, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now 92, Rather can reflect in the film on his decades of service, and without the pressure of deadlines, look to the future of democracy and a dedication to the truth. Following the film will be a Zoom Q&A with his grandson Martin Rather, who is a participant in the film.
Director Marshall and his wife Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg are creators of the production company Amblin Entertainment. Marshall is one of the few creatives to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony (EGOT). This film is sponsored by Douglas Denoff, Sutton Square Entertainment.
GO TO WWW.HAMPTONSDOCFEST.COM FOR ALL FESTIVAL PASSES & TICKETS
Tickets and passes for films at both theaters are available starting November 1 at www.hamptonsdocfest.com No tickets will be sold at the theater box offices. A limited number of tickets may be purchased by credit card only at the festival table in the theater lobby prior to a film, if seats are available.
A festival pass at $300 includes admission to all films at both venues, including the Opening Night Film, the Impact Award, the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award Gala, all the other awards films, and the Shorts & Breakfast Bites.
Tickets to the Opening Night Film on Thursday, Nov. 30, and the Impact Award on Friday, Dec. 1, each including a reception at Sag Harbor Cinema, are $25.
The Saturday, December 2 Pennebaker Gala at Bay Street Theater is $60.
A new feature this year, Shorts & Breakfast Bites, on Saturday and Sunday mornings at Bay Street Theater at 10 a.m. are $15 each.
Tickets to individual films at both venues are $15.
LINE-UP OF THE 30 FILMS AT THE TWO VENUES
THURSDAY, NOV. 30, SAG HARBOR CINEMA
5:30 p.m. Art & Inspiration Award “Call Me Dancer” (2023, 84 min.) In this heart-warming, joyful film about the power of dance, co-directed by Leslie Shampaine and Pip Gilmour, Manish Chauhan, a young street dancer in Mumbai, India, yearns to become a professional dancer. He goes against his parents’ wishes and secretly attends an inner-city dance school in Mumbai, where he meets Yehuda, a curmudgeonly 70-year old Israeli teacher. Together they transform each other’s lives in this film, featuring music by Indian singers and composers. Shampaine, a professional ballet dancer, will be on hand for the live Q&A.
8 p.m. Opening Night Film, “In the Company of Rose” (2023, 85 min.) Over six years of interviews on Martha’s Vineyard with Rose Styron, the widow of American novelist William Styron (“Lie Down in Darkness,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” “Sophie’s Choice”), James Lapine records the story of her complex life as a poet, journalist, and human rights activist during their 53-year marriage, and the many events they hosted in their home with Martha’s Vineyard luminaries including the Kennedys, Clintons, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and James Baldwin.
Following the film is a live Q&A with Tony Award-winning director James Lapine, a Zoom Q&A with Rose Styron, and also a cocktail reception. Some of Lapine’s many achievements include three Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical for “Into the Woods,” “Falsettos” and “Passion”; his direction of the Broadway play “Sunday in the Park with George”; and his documentary on Stephen Sondheim, “Six by Sondheim,” which won a Peabody Award. This film is sponsored by EPIC.
FRIDAY, DEC. 1, AT BAY STREET THEATER
12 p.m. “The Gullspång Miracle” (2023, 108 min.) In this film, a true-crime family drama, director Maria Fredriksson investigates the strange history of sisters May and Kari who buy an apartment in the small Swedish town of Gullspång and become convinced that the seller is their older sister Lita, who supposedly committed suicide 30 years earlier. Fredriksson will participate in a Zoom Q&A after. This is her first feature-length documentary.
2:30 p.m. “The Rainbow Warrior” (2023, 94 min.) Attending the live Q&A will be the director Edward McGurn. This documentary recounts the story of “The Rainbow Warrior,” Greenpeace’s flagship, which was bombed by two French secret agents on July 10, 1985, while at port in Auckland, New Zealand, causing international outrage and ending nuclear testing in the Pacific.
FRIDAY, DEC. 1, AT SAG HABOR CINEMA
5 p.m. “Orca – Black & White Gold” (2023, 92 min.) A riveting docu-thriller, this film exposes the illegal trade in endangered wild orcas. It offers access to activists, trainers, journalists and the catchers themselves, revealing the shocking truth behind the global orca trade. Director Sarah Nörenberg, for which this film is her directorial debut, will attend for the live Q&A.
7:30 p.m. Impact Award to Regina K. Scully, founder of Artemis Rising Foundation for “Obsessed with Light” (2023, 90 min.) Co-presented with New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT), the film, directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, will be followed by a live Q&A with NYWIFT executive director Cynthia Lopez and the two directors. A cocktail reception follows.
The documentary reveals the life of Loïe Fuller, a wildly original dancer, who combined dance, light and fabric, and was also an inventor who over a century ago pioneered and patented the creative use of electric lighting for the stage, used by rock stars of today.
SATURDAY, DEC. 2, AT BAY STREET THEATER
10 a.m. Shorts & Breakfast Bites, Program 1 (74 min.). A series of three short docs: “The ABCs of Book Banning” (2023, 27 min.) directed by Trish Adiesic and Naz Habtezghi, and produced by Sheila Nevins, about book banning in American schools; “The Bridge” (2023,12 min.) directed by Carl Sturgess, about The Bridge Golf Foundation for youth development in Bridgehampton; and “The Barber of Little Rock” (2023, 35 min.), co-directed by John Hoffman and Christine Turner, about a barber’s visionary approach to the wealth gap by founding a community bank in Little Rock, Arkansas. Directors Sturgess and Hoffman will both be on hand for the Q&A.
6:30 p.m. Gala Honoring Matthew Heineman with Pennebaker Career Achievement Award, starting with a cocktail/buffet reception, followed by an 8 p.m. awards presentation to Heineman and the screening of his latest film “American Symphony” (2023, 100 min.). The subject of “American Symphony” is composer and instrumentalist Jon Batiste, the former bandleader and musical director for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” who is also an 11-time Grammy-nominated and Album-of-the-Year winner in 2022 for his album “We Are.”
The documentary, which some consider a frontrunner for an Oscar nomination, follows Batiste as he prepares his original composition, “American Symphony,” for its premiere at Carnegie Hall at the same time his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, is undergoing medical treatment for her rare form of leukemia. “Variety” writer Clayton Davis has hailed the film as “quite possibly one of the best love stories seen on film in over two decades.”
The Career Achievement Award, named in honor of the late documentary filmmaker and long-time Sag Harbor resident D.A. Pennebaker, is sponsored by filmmaker Lana Jokel, who will present the award along with Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker’s partner and co-film director. Previous recipients in chronological order include Richard Leacock, Susan Lacy, Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, Barbara Kopple, Stanley Nelson, Alex Gibney, Liz Garbus, Sheila Nevins, Robert Kenner, Frederick Wiseman, Dawn Porter, and last year Sam Pollard.
SATURDAY, DEC. 2, AT SAG HARBOR CINEMA
1 p.m. “A Cooler Climate” (2023, 75 min.) In 2022, at age 96, famous filmmaker James Ivory revisits glorious color footage he shot in Afghanistan in 1960 in order to look back at his younger self and unravel how this journey so far from his hometown in Oregon helped form the filmmaker he was to become. Ivory, who formed Merchant Ivory Productions with film producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, which earned seven Academy Awards, will attend for his Q&A. Ivory at age 89 also won an Oscar in 2018 for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Call Me By Your Name,” making him the oldest Oscar recipient.
3 p.m. “Invisible Beauty” (2023, 115 min.) Directed by Bethann Hardison and Frederic Tcheng, “Invisible Beauty” reflects on Hardison’s personal journey in the Black is Beautiful fashion world—from runway model alongside Iman, to talent agent discovering supermodel Tyson Beckford and mentoring Naomi Campbell, to a fashion industry activist, for which she received many awards for her decades of advocacy work promoting greater diversity in the field. Tcheng has previously directed or produced films on fashion designers: “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” “Dior and I,” and “Halston.” Both Hardison and producer Lisa Cortés will participate in the post-film Q&A. This film is sponsored by Sarah Cuyler.
SUNDAY, DEC. 3, BAY STREET THEATER
10 a.m. Shorts & Breakfast Bites, Program 2 (104 min.) A series of four short docs: “The Orchestra Chuck Built” (2023, 22 min.), directed by Christopher Stoudt, about conductor Chuck Dickerson’s attempt to increase black musicians in American orchestras; “Rocks 4 Sale!” (2023, 16 min.), directed by David Dibble, about how kids in the former mining town of Silverton, Colorado “mined” and sold rocks to tourists; “Last Song from Kabul” (2023, 30 min.), directed by Kevin Macdonald, about a group of daring young musicians in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover; and “Daughter of Mine” (36 min.), directed by Vanessa Martino, with Nancy Buirski as the executive producer, about a mother who works to keep her daughter’s murderer in prison. Director Dibble will attend the Q&A.
SUNDAY, DEC. 3, SAG HARBOR CINEMA
2 p.m. Legacy Award Presented Posthumously to Nancy Buirski, “The Loving Story” (77 min.) The Hamptons Doc Fest’s first Legacy Award will be presented by Buirski’s friends and HDF Advisory Board members Susan Margolin and Chris Hegedus to Buirski’s sister Judith Cohen at this tribute which will also screen her film “The Loving Story,” which recounts the story of Mildred and Richard Loving’s quest as an interracial couple to marry in the state of Virginia, leading to a historic Supreme Court decision outlawing anti-miscegenation laws.
Buirski’s accomplishments include establishing the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina in 1998 and later directing six award-winning feature documentaries including a trilogy exploring racial justice (“The Loving Story,” “The Rape of Racy Taylor,” “A Crime on the Bayou”) and most recently “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” in 2022.
4 p.m. “Anselm” (in 3D, 93 min.) This 3D documentary creates a luminous portrait of iconoclastic painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, illuminating five decades of his work creating monumental sculptures and enormous paintings, his life journey from native Germany to France, and his fascination with myth and history. The film is directed by Wim Wenders, a three-time Oscar nominee for “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Pina,” and “The Salt of the Earth,” also serving as the former president of the European Film Academy.
7 p.m. “Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes” (2023, 96 min.) Director Sam Shahid will be on hand for the Q&A after the screening of his film about George Platt Lynes, a celebrity photographer in the era of the 1930’s-50’s, known for his photography of the male form, his friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alfred Kinsey and his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists.
MONDAY, DEC. 4, AT BAY STREET THEATER
12 p.m. “26.2 to Life” (2023, 90 min.) Set at San Quentin, California’s oldest prison, this film explores the crisis of incarceration through the stories of three men living out life sentences. As they work to better themselves despite being behind bars, the men train for the most unique marathon in the world—105 laps around an uneven dirt and concrete path that loops the prison’s crowded Lower Yard.
Director Christine Yoo, who is a volunteer at San Quentin State Prison and serves as co-founder of the San Quentin Film Festival, will be on hand for the Q&A. This is her first feature documentary.
3 p.m. “The Eternal Memory” (2023, 85 min.) In this documentary which won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Augusto Gongora, a veteran Chilean political journalist, who dedicated himself in the 1970’s and 1980’s to publicizing the iniquities of the Pinochet regime, now ironically struggles with his own memory as he contends with Alzheimer’s. The film is also a love story between him and his devoted wife and caretaker, Paulina Urrutia, the former Chilean culture minister. Maite Alberdi, the Chilean director, was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary in 2021 for her film “The Mole Agent.”
5:30 p.m. “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” (2023, 116 min.) This film asks the question, why did Shere Hite, whose 1976 best-selling book “The Hite Report” about female sexual experience, disappear from public view in the decades before her death in 2020? Director Nicole Newnham is also known for her Oscar-nominated film “Crip Camp” and the multiple Emmy-nominated film “The Rape of Europa.”
8 p.m. “La Singla” (2023, 95 min.) Director Paloma Zapata will attend the Q&A after the screening of her film about Antonia Singla, once considered the best flamenco dancer in the world. Singla’s striking movements, passion and intense gaze revolutionized the art form. Then, suddenly at the height of her fame, she vanished without a trace. Zapata finds La Singla to find out why.
TUESDAY, DEC. 5, AT BAY STREET THEATER
1 p.m. “The Camera of Doctor Morris” (2023, 73 min.) Directed by Israeli documentary filmmakers Itamar Alcalay and Meital Zvieli, “The Camera of Doctor Morris” recounts Dr. Morris’ family saga and inspiring, absorbing story of births, deaths, tragedies and dramas over their years living in the desert in Eilat, Israel, after the archive of his film footage was discovered, along with the shattering story of his two young daughters.
3 p.m. “Mourning in Lod” (2023, 73 min.) This film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is told through three people whose fates become linked in a viscous cycle of violence in Lod, a city west of Jerusalem that is inhabited by both Arabs and Jews who live side by side in a strained coexistence. The outpouring of love, anger and forgiveness that unfolds following a terrible tragedy offers a glimpse of light to offset the seemingly endless mourning. Director Hilla Medalia, who is a Peabody-winning and Emmy-nominated director/producer and the founder of award-winning Medalia Productions, will participate in a Zoom Q&A after the film.
5:30 p.m. “Dusty & Stones” (2023, 83 min.) Directed by Jesse Rudoy, a filmmaker, musician and born-again country fan based in Brooklyn, this film, full of country music, tells the remarkable story of cousins and country singers Gazi “Dusty” Similane and Linda “Stones” Msibi, who come from the small African kingdom of Swaziland. They are unexpectedly nominated to record their songs in Nashville and compete in a Texas battle of the bands, and they make a wondrous 10-day road trip across the American South, determined to turn their careers around. Rudoy will attend a Zoom Q&A after the screening.
8 p.m. Human Rights Award to “999: The Forgotten Girls of the Holocaust” (2023, 99 min.) The film is directed by Hamptons resident Heather Dune Macadam, who will appear afterwards for a live Q&A. She is also the author of the critically-acclaimed book on which the film is based—“999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Transport to Auschwitz,” which has been translated into 19 languages. The film recounts the untold story of the first official Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz—the 999 teenage Jewish girls whom the Nazis ordered the Slovak government to send in the spring of 1942 to Auschwitz as a slave labor force. This film is sponsored by Leslie and Andrew Siben.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 6, AT BAY STREET THEATER
10 a.m. Young Voices Program, for students, faculty & family only. Includes a short film “Rocks 4 Sale!” and workshop with award-winning filmmaker Roger Sherman.
2 p.m. “Shari & Lamb Chop” (2023, 92 min.) “Shari and Lamb Chop” was the ventriloquist duo of Shari Lewis and a sock puppet named Lamb Chop that debuted on the CBS children’s television series “Captain Kangeroo” in 1956 and went on to attain cultural icon status by the end of the 20th century. This documentary examines Shari Lewis’ personal and professional journey, which included winning 13 Emmys, a Peabody and authoring 60 children’s books. Director Lisa D’Apolito, whose highly successful first documentary was “Love, Gilda,” will attend the Zoom Q&A after.
4:30 p.m. Environmental Award to “Deep Rising” (2023, 93 min.) Directed by Matthew Rytz, a visual anthropologist by training, the film represents a gripping tale of geopolitical, scientific and corporate intrigue that exposes the International Seabed Authority, a secretive organization that greenlights the massive extraction of metals from the deep seabed floor, thus destroying this last pristine environment for profit.
7 p.m. Closing Night Film, “Rather” (2023, 95 min.) Directed by Frank Marshall, “Rather” is a documentary about journalist Dan Rather’s over 60-year career, covering some of the most seminal events in recent history, such as the Vietnam War, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now 92, Rather can reflect on his decades of service and, without the pressure of deadlines, look to the future of democracy and a dedication to the truth.
Following the film, there will be a Zoom Q&A with Rather’s grandson Martin Rather, a participant in the film. Director Marshall and his wife Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg are creators of the production company Amblin Entertainment. He is one of the few creatives to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony (EGOT). This film is sponsored by Douglas Denoff, Sutton Square Entertainment.
