| Issue #27, September 29, 2006 |
preview: hamptons international film festival
Each year, The Hamptons International Film Festival arrives in mid-October drawing crowds, innovative film, impressive talents and the wonder of cinema just when we thought the seasonal excitement had finally passed. It returns this October for its 14th annual celebration.
Featuring 115 films, most of which are debuts, the line-up includes features, shorts, documentaries from all over the world. Panel discussions, award ceremonies and creative programs are among the multitude of talent-infused and star-studded events at various locations in the Hamptons.
Rajendra Roy, the new artistic director of the Festival, in conjunction with Hosh Koury and Executive Director Denise Kassell have scoured the world’s festivals and viewed thousands of submissions to select an inspired group of works.
In the Festival’s spirit of authentic vision and global perspective, the program opens with a world premier screening of Philip Haas’ The Situation. This is a bold choice and the first film to deal with the U.S. war in Iraq. This Post-Iraq war drama stars Connie Nielsen as a journalist venturing through Baghdad’s warring factions, along with “Rising Star” Mido Hamada and Damian Lewis.
The popular panel event, “A Conversation With……” one of the highlights of the festival, will be with Robert Altman and moderated by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. The Golden Starfish Award for Career Achievement in Acting will be given to Ellen Burstyn, most known for The Last Picture Show and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and The Fountain (this year’s Alfred P. Sloane Award). The Industry Toast, a tradition that honors an individual who has contributed to the spirit and vision of the Film industry, will be hosted by Rosie Perez and presented to producer and “This Is That” founder Ted Hope.
The Golden Starfish Feature Competitions will be taking place throughout the weekend. Six narrative and six documentary features will compete for Golden Starfish Awards, and six other pictures are part of the Films of Conflict and Resolution competition. There will be a special program this year, “A Tribute to Rona Jaffe,” which will premiere The Best of Everything. This film, directed by Negulesco, was adapted from Jaffe’s iconic New York City career girl novel and will be followed by a discussion with Jaffe’s closest friends and colleagues.
The Best Narrative Film category, which will award $190,000, includes a diverse collection of new films. Three Sisters traces Egyptian triplets over three generations; Black Irish brings to the screen an Irish Catholic household in Boston. Bothersome Man is set in some parallel universe. Vanaja is a coming of age story set in South India. Emma’s Bliss is a feral love story between a free spirited girl and a car salesman. Holly finds love in dire circumstances, between a ne’er-do-well and a Vietnamese girl sold into slavery in Cambodia.
Stories from abroad have always been the main focus of the “Films of Conflict and Resolution” program. This year’s crop of films is strongly focused on women and children in conflict zones. Among the movies are a drama about an African immigrant in Dublin, The Front Line; one that follows a Canadian-Tibetan woman as she travels to Tibet on a mission for the, What Remains of Us; and the Romeo and Juliet tragedy set in a Danish housing project with feuding groups of Danes and Palestinians, 1:1. Starfish Documentaries’ topics that range from a Steinway Piano to the Moroccan countryside South Africa’s to a summer camp in New England.
Who the #$&% Is?, a documentary about a woman trying to authenticate a Pollock painting, is one of a few events for East End art enthusiasts, produced by another Hamptons regular and television executive Don Hewitt.
Another exciting event will honor one of the most influential of artistic East Enders, the late Andy Warhol, with a re-mastered screening of Andy’s seldom seen short film, Mrs. Warhol. It pictures his mother, Julia Warhol, who in her hairnet and housedress and with an uncanny resemblances to her son, babbles and heckles while scrambling eggs and ironing his underwear.
For the third year, the Gray Matter series honors the late legend Spalding Gray with innovative risk-taking cinema features films by Jen Lien, Jay Anania, Julian Goldberger and Margarethe von Trottes, Phili Greoninf and Georgi Lazarevski.
Other events this year include “Face Play,” a screenplay reading of Gretchen Somerfeld’s Face Value – the story of a screen siren in Nazi Germany and a roundtable Rising Stars talk with Julianne Nicholson and Tom Cavanagh about the acting craft and film process.
Panels include “A Killer Life” with Ted Hope and Christine Vachon and a talk with Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handl from the Sloan Award winning film The Fountain.
–Julia Nasser
Call (631) 324-4600 for tickets or visit www.hamptonsfilmfest.org. for full schedules, locations and more information.
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