ALL THAT BREATHES

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CLOSING NIGHT FILM

ALL THAT BREATHES

TUES, 12/6, 8:00pm, 97 min BAY STREET THEATER

Zoom Q/A with Director Shanuak Sen & Andrew Botsford

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

All That Breathes" blends a verité-style character study with gorgeous nature cinematography while never losing the film’s overall commentary on how man interacts with nature—or merely chooses to destroy it through inaction.

Director: Shaunak Sen
Producers: Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann, Teddy Leifer
Editor: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen
Cinematographers: Benjamin Bernhard, Riju Das, Saumyananda Sahi

In one of the world's most populated cities, cows, rats, monkeys, frogs, and hogs jostle cheek-by-jowl with people. Here, two brothers fall in love with a bird—the black kite, a staple in the skies of New Delhi. From their makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement, the "kite brothers" care for thousands of these mesmeric creatures that drop daily from smog- choked skies. As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, the relationship between this Muslim family and the neglected kite forms a poetic chronicle of the city's collapsing ecology and rising social tensions. Human and animal life is not divided in a city like New Delhi—it is all part of the same tableau, and Sen’s film captures it with a blend of striking beauty and empathetic fragility.

Shaunak Sen is an Indian filmmaker, video artist and film scholar from Delhi. All That Breathes won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Eye award for the best documentary at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

COVID CENTURY—THE PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS DILEMMA

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COVID CENTURY—THE PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS DILEMMA

MON, 12/5, 5:30pm, 98 min, BAY STREET THEATER

Zoom Q/A with Director Michael Wech and Andrew Botsford

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Director: Michael Wech
Producers: Leopold Hoesch, Peter Wolf
Editor: Andre Hammesfahr
Cinematographers: Karsten Hohmann, Johannes Imdahl, Sven Kiesche, Justin Lovett, Dan Soekov

In most peoples’ memories the Covid-19 pandemic started in the first weeks of spring 2020, but the decisive period for why the outbreak in Wuhan turned into an epidemic started much earlier. Covid Century highlights key moments of the first ten weeks after the discovery of the new disease that were crucial to the pandemic's global spread. Jeremy Farrar, one of the world's leading scientists, says, "We could have stopped the pandemic."

In a previously unseen manner, the investigative film by Michael Wech shows how the Chinese authorities withheld crucial information and impeded for weeks any attempt to share the identity of the new pathogen with the international community. This fatal delay circumvented global containment strategies hindering the development of much-needed, diagnostic tests and vaccines.

Michael Wech’s 2019 documentary Resistance Fighters, about the global antibiotics crisis, received the "Impact Award" at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the "Grand Prix" at the Pariscience Festival International du Film Scientifique and was nominated for the German Television Award.

Film is sponsored by Jason Katz

DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY

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DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY

SAT, 12/3, 4:00pm, 101 min SAG HARBOR CINEMA

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Co-Presented with NYWIFT, New York Women in Film & Television

Q/A with Director Nancy Buirski and Producer Susan Margolin in conversation with Roger Sherman

Director: Nancy Buirski
Producers: Nancy Buirski, Simon Kilmurry, Susan Margolin
Editor: Anthony Ripoli
Cinematographer: Rex Miller

This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about New York in a troubled era of cultural upheaval. The 1969 movie tells the story of two homeless loners brilliantly played by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, who join forces out of desperation and struggle to survive. Midnight Cowboy is set in a New York besieged by economic collapse in the midst of black, gay and women’s liberation movements. This documentary looks at why this unique movie resonates so powerfully more than fifty years later. Midnight Cowboy is the first X-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 1998 Nancy Buirski founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and directed it for 10 years before embarking on her own filmmaking career. Buirski often tackles difficult subjects and has directed and produced six feature length documentaries in just over 10 years, all of which have been critically acclaimed. Her first documentary, The Loving Story in 2011, told the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple that married in Virginia, not knowing that interracial marriage was illegal in the state. The film won an Emmy and Peabody and was nominated for an Oscar. In 2017 she made The Rape of Recy Taylor. The film was awarded the Human Rights Nights prize at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

FASHION REIMAGINE

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Recipient of the 2022 ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD

FASHION REIMAGINED

THURS, 12/1, 5:00pm, 92 min, BAY STREET THEATER

Zoom Q/A with Director Becky Hutner and Roger Sherman

“Amy Powney was an absolute beginner in the realm of sustainable fashion when she began her quest in 2018. And Fashion Reimagined similarly functions as an eye-opening primer on how the clothes you buy today will shape the world of tomorrow. This film is a valuable resource not only for students of fashion, but to anyone who knows the power of small gestures to make a big impact.”--Jose Rodriguez

Director: Becky Hutner
Producers: Becky Hutner, Lindsay Lowe, Andrea van Beuren
Editors: Becky Hutner, Sam Rogers
Cinematographer: Daniel Götz

Fashion is among the most polluting industries in the world. The accelerated turnaround of trends known as “fast fashion” is only escalating the impact with global clothing production doubling between 2000-2014 and the average American now discarding 70 pounds of clothing per year, 85% of which ends up in landfills. Fashion designer Amy Powney is on a quest to change that. After she won the coveted Vogue award for Best Young Designer, this fiercely determined young woman decided to use her large cash award to create a sustainable collection from field to finished garment and, in the process, transformed her entire business.

Becky Hutner is a Toronto-born filmmaker living in coastal England. Her filmmaking journey includes five years in London creating short-form work in the fashion and culture space for DUCK Productions. Notable DUCK projects include Painting Her Story, a series about the gender gap in art for the National Gallery. Fashion Reimagined is Becky’s first feature.

FOUR WINTERS

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Recipient of the 2022 HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD

FOUR WINTERS

TUES, 12/6, 5:30pm, 96 min BAY STREET THEATER

Q/A with Director Julia Mintz and Andrew Botsford

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

“No person should succumb to brutality without putting up resistance — individually it can save one’s life, en masse it can change the course of history."

SHALOM YORAN, JEWISH PARTISAN

Director: Julia Mintz
Producer: Julia Mintz
Editors: Timothy A. Kuper, Peter Heady
Cinematographers: Larry Banks, Chris Ewers, Allen Moore, Stephen Kazmierski

Against extraordinary odds, over 25,000 Jewish Partisans fought back against the Nazis and their collaborators from the forests of WWII's Belarus, Ukraine and Eastern Europe. These determined men and women, many barely teens, engaged in acts of sabotage, blowing up trains, burning electric stations, and attacking armed enemy headquarters. A fusion of inspiring and powerful first- person interviews, family photographs and rare archival footage shatter the myth of Jewish passivity. The last surviving partisans tell their stories of resistance in Four Winters, revealing a stunning narrative of heroism and resilience.

Julia Mintz’s work focuses on inspiring narratives that reflect on soulful bravery and resistance against unimaginable odds. She has been on the producing team for films shortlisted for Academy Awards; premiered at Cannes, Sundance and TriBeCa; and won Emmy, Peabody and festival awards. Four Winters is Julia’s directorial debut.

“In memory of the six million who perished.” - Anonymous

HAMPTONS DOC FEST HONORS SAM POLLARD WITH THE 2022 PENNEBAKER CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

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2022 PENNEBAKER CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD TO SAM POLLARD

GALA evening, SAT, 12/3, at BAY STREET THEATER

$50 Ticket

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

7:00 Cocktail and Buffet Reception

8:00 Pennebaker Tribute Award; Julie Anderson interview with Sam Pollard on his monumental career as chronicler of the black experience in America.

9:00 Film screening: Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power

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Sam Pollard is a veteran feature film and television editor, and documentary producer/director. With a career spanning 50 years, describing the essence and impact of his thoughtful, stellar body of work—be it as editor, director, or producer—is a true challenge. The New York Times called him “a multi-hyphenate artist who has quietly built a monumental career” exploring the contours and nuances of social hierarchies and human behavior. A dedicated, inquisitive chronicler of the Black Experience in America, his work has garnered multiple Peabody and Emmy Awards, and an Academy Award nomination. He has been honored with a 2021 New York Film Festival Tribute and a 2021 Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association.

“When I think about his documentaries, they add up to a corpus — a way of telling African-American history in its various dimensions,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University scholar, literary critic, and producer of two of Pollard’s films.

Between 1990 and 2010, Pollard, a generous collaborator with a sharp, skillful eye, edited several Spike Lee Films: Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Clockers and Bamboozled. He and Lee co-produced a few documentaries for the small and big screen, including Four Little Girls, about the 1963 Birmingham church bombings which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998 and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2005) which won numerous awards, including a Peabody and three Emmy Awards. Five years later in 2010, he co-produced and supervised the edit on the film’s follow-up, If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise.

As a producer/director, since 2015, his credits include: Slavery by Another Name for PBS which was in competition at the Sundance Festival; August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand for American Masters; Two Trains Runnin’ which premiered at Full Frame Film Festival; and Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me for American Masters, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2019, he co-directed the six-part series, Why We Hate, which premiered on The Discovery Channel. In 2020, he was one of the directors on the HBO series, Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children. Also that year, he completed MLK/FBI, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and was featured at the New York Film Festival. In 2021, he directed Citizen Ashe, which premiered at Telluride.

Pollard has served on advisory committees for the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Independent Television Service (ITVS). He has been a film professor at NYU for close to 30 years.

On a personal note, Sam has been a true friend to the festival. His enthusiasm and dedication to his craft, his unique affinity for collaboration, his commitment to mentorship and passing on what he has learned in his long and illustrious career is an inspiration to us all.

Hamptons Doc Fest has had the honor of showing five of Sam’s films:
• Sammy Davis Jr.: I Gotta Be Me—Winner, Filmmaker’s Choice Award 2015
• MLK/FBI—Opening Night Film 2020
• Black Art: In the Absence of Light—Special screening with the Parrish Art Museum 2020
• Citizen Ashe—Winner, Audience Award 2021
• Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power—on receiving the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award 2022

LAST FLIGHT HOME

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Recipient of the 2022 FILMMAKER IMPACT AWARD, Ondi Timoner

LAST FLIGHT HOME

SAT, 12/3, 1:30pm, 101 min SAG HARBOR CINEMA

Q/A with Director Ondi Timoner and Rogr Sherman

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

‘At its best, “Last Flight Home” unfolds as a celebration of Eli’s life while he still can enjoy the testimony of the strong impressions he left on others over more than 90 years. That in your final moments on this plane you can see the scale of your life tip towards love and not resentment is a privilege he undoubtedly earned.’

Carlos Aguilar

Director: Ondi Timoner
Producers: Ondi Timoner, David Turner
Editor: Ondi Timoner

Behind a white picket fence, on an unremarkable suburban street, we discover Eli Timoner, who founded Air Florida, the fastest growing airline in the world in the 1970's. During his final days, we discover his extraordinary life filled with incredible success and devastating setbacks, and most importantly, an innate goodness which won him the enduring love and support of his family. Through stunning vérité footage recorded by Ondi, his middle child, Last Flight Home takes audiences on a heart-wrenching ride through Timoner’s life, illustrating a modern day success story built on the power of human connection.

Ondi Timoner has won numerous festival awards for her films, and has the rare distinction of winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice, for Dig! about the collision of art and commerce and We Live in Public about the loss of privacy online. In November, 2022, she was honored with the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence at Doc NYC.

LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER

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LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER

SAT, 12/3, 90 min, follows the Pennebaker Award presentation at BAY STREET THEATER

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Directors: Sam Pollard, Geeta Gandbhir
Producers: Jessica Devaney, Anya Rous, Dema Paxton Fofang
Editor: Viridiana Lieberman

In 1960, 80% of voters in Lowndes County, Alabama were black, but none of the black voters were registered to vote. What was behind this injustice? Lowndes County chronicles the courageous men and women, famous and unknown, who put their lives on the line to secure the right to vote for everyone. The story is told by both the black and white people who were there at the time, including grassroots organizers and citizens content with the status quo, who share their personal anecdotes of that tumultuous time, lending an uncommon intimacy and authenticity to this historical documentary. Sam Pollard is a veteran American film director, editor, producer, and screenwriter whose ground-breaking work is focused on the African American experience. Geeta Gandbhir is an award-winning director, producer and editor with over 25 years in the industry. She has won two Emmy Awards. As editor, she has won an Academy Award and three Peabody Awards.

The Pennebaker Career Achievement Award is sponsored by Lana Jokel

OMAR SOSA’S 88 WELL-TUNED DRUMS

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Recipient of the 2022 ART & INSPIRATION AWARD Sponsored by THE TEE & CHARLES ADDAMS FOUNDATION

OMAR SOSA’S 88 WELL-TUNED DRUMS

MON, 12/5, 7:30pm, 99 min BAY STREET THEATER

Q/A with Director Soren Sorensen and Andrew Botsford

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Director: Soren Sorensen
Producers: Soren Sorensen, Scott Price
Editor: Soren Sorensen
Cinematographers: Jason Rossi, Jay Heyman, Dan Akiba, Roberto Medina, Mark Matook

Multiple Grammy-nominee, Cuba- born pianist and composer, Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene today. He fuses a wide range of jazz, world music and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a fresh and original sound with a Latin jazz heart.

In his 25+ years as a solo artist, Omar Sosa has released over 30 albums and received four Grammy nominations and three Latin Grammy nominations. Often performing as many as 100 concerts across six continents annually, Sosa is known for a rhythmic style and musical influences and collaborators as diverse as his travel itinerary.

Soren Sorensen is an award-winning filmmaker specializing in social and cultural issues. His first feature-length documentary, My Father’s Vietnam, combines interviews and never-before-seen photographs and 8mm footage of the era, to tell the story of three soldiers.

PATRICK AND THE WHALE

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PATRICK AND THE WHALE

FRI, 12/2, 5:00pm, 72 min SAG HARBOR CINEMA

Zoom Q/A with Director Mark Fletcher, Cinematographer Patrick Dykster and Roger Sherman

Director: Mark Fletcher
Producers: Wolfgang Knopfler, Walter Kohler
Editor: Mark Fletcher
Cinematographers: Rupert Murray, Gail Jenkinson, Patrick Dykstra, Romain Barats

For twenty years, Patrick Dykstra has dedicated his life to traveling the globe, following and diving with whales. Over the years, he has learned how whales see and hear, how they perceive other creatures in the water and how they behave at close quarters. In Dominica in 2019, Patrick had a close encounter with a female sperm whale. Patrick felt an overwhelming sense that she was genuinely trying to communicate. Employing stunning cinematography, and with a keen ear tuned to the whale’s song of clicks and whistles, the film follows Patrick as he takes us under the seas again to search for the special whale he named "Dolores," so she can help him show us the hidden world of her species.

Mark Fletcher is an England-based producer, editor, and director specializing in wildlife films. Patrick and the Whale (2022) is his most recent film. When introducing the documentary’s World Premiere screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Director Mark Fletcher jokingly admitted that “the whales started to direct the movie.” The packed theater let out a hearty laugh, but he was only half-kidding.

PLAYING IN THE FM BAND: THE STEVE POST STORY

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PLAYING IN THE FM BAND: THE STEVE POST STORY

TUES, 12/6, 3:00pm, 90 min BAY STREET THEATER

Q/A with Director Rosemarie Reed and Andrew Botsford

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Director: Rosemarie Reed
Producer: Rosemarie Reed
Editor: Dina Potocki
Cinematographer: Jonathan Smith

Steve Post, a Jewish kid born in 1944 in the Bronx, was an overweight, hapless nebbish who had a complicated childhood. His mother died of cancer when he was 10 years old, after which he and his older brother spent two years in a Dickensian boarding school, where he was taunted and mercilessly bullied. Back at home, he found escape from his dreary existence in creating radio programs. Ignoring strict parental prohibitions, Post surreptitiously used his father’s reel- to-reel tape recorder to create and host radio programs. Eventually, in 1966, he realized his childhood dream at Pacifica Radio’s WBAI-FM in New York City, becoming a successful cult radio personality with “The Outside,” an innovative all-night, live, free-form broadcast heard Saturday nights for some 15 years.

Rosemarie Reed travels the world to film her highly acclaimed documentaries. Some of her films document the lives of scientists such as Irène Joliot-Curie and Frederic Joliot Curie and Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn. Others include historical figures and world leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev.

Film sponsored by Leslie and Andrew Siben

REAL FUR

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REAL FUR

MON, 12/5, 12:00pm, 89 min BAY STREET THEATER

Q/A with Director Taimoor Choudhry and Andrew Botsford

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Director: Taimoor Choudhry
Producers: Taimoor Choudhry, Kelly Morris
Editor: Kelly Morris

For years, Taimoor Choudhry led a life of glamour, rubbing elbows with celebrities, fashionistas and the elite as he grew his family’s fine jewelry empire in Pakistan. His passions and priorities took a dramatic turn after witnessing animal cruelty in a market. That moment changed him and it became his mission to raise awareness through the art of documentary film. Real Fur is an eye-opening undercover investigation about the true cost of the fur farming industry in Canada.

After moving to Canada to pursue a film degree, Taimoor was shocked to learn that the animal exploitation he thought he’d left behind in Pakistan was very much present in his new home. In response to this, Taimoor founded Arise Productions and has dedicated the past five years to activism and animal rights through film.

SAY AMEN, SOMEBODY

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SPECIAL 40th ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

SAY AMEN, SOMEBODY

SAT, 12/3, 11:30am, 100 min, plus performance BAY STREET THEATER

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Opening with a performance of contemporary Gospel Music by Jeff Roberson and the Nulife Singers

Q/A with Director George Nierenberg, Cinematographer Don Lenzer in conversation with Andrew Botsford

Directors: George T. Nierenberg
Producers: George T. Nierenberg, Karen Nierenberg
Editor: Paul Barnes
Cinematographers: Edward Lachman, Don Lenzer

Say Amen, Somebody is a joyful tribute to black men and women who first began combining the heart and soul of Negro spirituals with the infectious rhythms of jazz and blues. The film follows two main figures: Thomas A. Dorsey, considered the Father of Gospel Music, 83 at the time of filming, and Willie Mae Ford Smith, 77 and an associate of Dorsey’s and the film’s primary subject. Dorsey recalls how he came to write Take My Hand, Precious Lord and the difficulties he faced introducing gospel blues to black churches in the early 1930s. Smith trained several very influential 20th century gospel singers even though she remained relatively unknown herself outside of gospel.

As a 28-year-old Jewish filmmaker, George Nierenberg had no experience with gospel music before taking on this project. He had recently finished No Maps on My Taps, a 1979 documentary following three New York City-based tap dancers. Seeking ideas for a new project, he asked blues guitarist and friend Ry Cooder for suggestions. Cooder told him, “You oughta look into gospel music; those cats are really neat.” The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1982 and in 2019 Nierenberg supervised the restoration of the inspirational film which has played at festivals around the globe.

Elder Jeff Roberson was born and raised in Long Island, New York, the son of Pentecostal parents who had a compelling love for music. Not only is he a skilfull world-class vocalist, his talents transcend various creative art forms such as musician, innovative producer, accomplished pianist and organist. His many recorded albums with the Nulife singers are well-known treasures.

Say Amen, Somebody is sponsored by Messina, Perillo and Hill LLP

STILL WORKING 9 TO 5

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Opening Night Film

STILL WORKING 9 TO 5

THURS, 12/1, 7:30pm, 96 min, Sag Harbor Cinema

Q/A with Directors Camille Hardman, Gary Lane; Larry Lane and author Ellen Cassedy in conversation with Susan Lacy

Wine & Cheese Reception to follow

Origin Of The Original Film

The documentary opens with the deconstruction of the original “9 to 5” film and why it shone a light on gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace in the late 1970s. We discover how the concept for the film rose out of the women’s movement and Jane Fonda’s close friendship with fellow activist Karen Nussbaum and how, in 1973, Karen, along with her friend Ellen Cassedy, established the 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women, after experiencing many workplace indignities.

Directors: Camille Hardman, Gary Lane
Producers: Camille Hardman, Gary Lane
Editors: Oreet Rees, Elisa Bonora
Cinematographer: Brian Tweedt

When the highest-grossing comedy, 9 to 5, starring Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman and Lily Tomlin, exploded on the cinema screens in 1980, the laughs hid a serious message about inequality in the workplace. Now, 40 years later, Still Working 9 to 5 takes a fresh look at the iconic classic and, guess what, little has changed for women over the decades. Injustice is still rampant and barriers still block many women’s way.

Camille Hardman has been producing documentaries and reality TV series in both her native Australia and Los Angeles. Five years ago Camille created the popular DIY Network/ HGTV series Restored which has spread the importance of restoration around the globe.

Gary and Larry Lane’s debut documentary Hollywood to Dollywood screened in 70 film festivals around the world and won 25 best documentary awards in total. It featured 15 original Dolly Parton songs.

The Opening Night film is sponsored by Stony Brook Southampton Hospital

Reception sponsored by Untitled Entertainment

SUBJECT

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SUBJECT

THURS,12/1, 2:00pm, 93 min BAY STREET THEATER

Q/A with Jesse Friedman and Roger Sherman

Directors: Jennifer Tiexiera, Camilla Hall
Producers: Camilla Hall, Jennifer Tiexiera, Joe Caterini
Editor: Lauren Saffa
Cinematographer: Zachary Shields

Subject picks up where most documentaries end. The film has come out, perhaps won a prize or two, but then it’s over. The director gets the acclaim and the audience’s interest in the subject of the film ends. But now, two directors have given voice to those made famous for an Andy Warhol instant. The experiences of people and families turned upside down in films like The Staircase, Hoop Dreams, The Wolfpack or Capturing the Friedmans are now center stage. Through fascinating and revealing interviews with the film’s protagonists, Subject examines the impact being in those films had on the players’ lives, as well as the ethics documentarians face when they make a nonfiction film.

Jennifer Tiexiera is an award-winning documentary director, producer and editor and one of the co-founders of Lady & Bird, a female-run documentary production company focused on telling stories from underrepresented voices. Camilla Hall specializes in vérité documentary filmmaking and comes from a seven-year career in print journalism at the Financial Times and Bloomberg News.

THE GRAB

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THE GRAB

SUN, 12/4, 11:00am, 104 min BAY STREET THEATER

Zoom Q/A with Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite and Ron Simon

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Producers: Nathan Halverson, Amanda Pike, Blye Pagon Faust, Nicole Rocklin, Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Editor: Davis Coombe
Cinematographer: Jonathan Ingalls

At first it seemed like an isolated incident—the 2013 sale of Smithfield Foods, which controls a quarter of the U.S. pork supply, to a Chinese company. But further investigative reporting dug up similar resource grabs by other nations. The Smithfield revelation led Nathan Halverson of The Center for Investigative Reporting and his colleagues to follow a trail of money and resources and to probe into the covert actions of the world’s most powerful countries as they gobble up precious land and vital resources in other nations.

Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s films often deal with social, cultural and environmental issues relating to real-life events. She became seasoned at cultivating whistleblowers and uncovering secrets in her 2013 documentary Blackfish, which brought major changes to SeaWorld and is one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time. Blackfish was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for Best Documentary. At the film’s festival debut at Toronto in September, she told the audience that she had many opportunities to tell stories after the success of Blackfish - but this is the one she had to tell.

THE QUIET EPIDEMIC

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THE QUIET EPIDEMIC

SAT, 12/3, 11:00am, 102 min SAG HARBOR CINEMA

Q/A with Directors Lindsay Key, Winslow Crane-Murdoch; Producer Chris Hegedus in conversation with Roger Sherman

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Directors: Lindsay Keys, Winslow Crane-Murdoch
Producers: Daria Lombroso, Lindsay Keys, Chris Hegedus
Editors: Mark Harrison, Winslow Crane-Murdoch

Cinematographers: Lindsay Keys, Winslow Crane-Murdoch

After years of living with mysterious symptoms, a young girl from Brooklyn and a Duke University scientist are diagnosed with a disease said to not exist: Chronic Lyme disease. The Quiet Epidemic follows their search for answers, which lands them in the middle of a vicious medical debate. What begins as a patient story evolves into an investigation into the history of Lyme disease. A paper trail of suppressed scientific research and buried documents reveals why ticks—and the diseases they carry—have been allowed to quietly spread around the globe.

In 2015, each of the co-directors was forced to move home with their families in upstate New York—too ill to sustain their careers and navigate city life. Upon learning they were both filmmakers with Lyme, a nurse practitioner decided to connect them. Thrust into the middle of this controversial medical mystery, they decided to use their cameras to understand the disease that had upended their lives. The Quiet Epidemic is the first feature film for both directors.

THE SMELL OF MONEY

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THE SMELL OF MONEY

SUN, 12/4, 2:00pm, 84 min SAG HARBOR CINEMA

Q/A with Director Shawn Bannon, Producer Jamie Berger in conversation with Susan Margolin

If seats are still available, tickets may be purchased at the festival desk. Cash or Credit cards only

Director: Shawn Bannon
Producers: Shawn Bannon, Jamie Berger
Editor: Shawn Bannon
Cinematographer: Shawn Bannon

A century after her grandfather claimed his freedom from slavery, Elsie Herring brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism literally in her backyard. When a corporate hog farm moves in—uninvited—on her grandfather’s land, Elsie decides to fight back. But as her rural community becomes the epicenter of the pork industry’s explosion in America, Elsie’s struggle to save her family’s home and heritage turns into a battle against Smithfield Foods, one of the world’s most powerful companies, and its deadly pollution.

“The smell of money”—that’s what Big Pork calls the stench of pig waste in the air in eastern North Carolina, where much of the world’s bacon and barbecue is made, one of the only states where it is legal to spray untreated hog waste into the air. But to Elsie and others who live near the state’s giant pig factories, the revolting odor is a call to battle against generations of injustice.

Shawn Bannon’s short films are The Green Knight Documentary and Bloody Barbara. The Smell of Money is his first feature documentary; it premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival in April of 2022 where it won the Documentary Feature Jury Prize.

THE TERRITORY

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National Geographic Documentary Films Tribute

THE TERRITORY

FRI, 12/2, 7:00pm, 85 min SAG HARBOR CINEMA

Award to National Geographic Documentary Films, accepted by Chris Albert, EVP Global Communications, followed by a screening of The Territory.

Q/A with Director Alex Pritz in conversation with Roger Sherman

Director: Alex Pritz
Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Will N. Miller, Sigrid Dyekjaer, Lizzie Gillett, Gabriel Uchida
Editor: Carlos Rojas Felice
Cinematographers: Alex Pritz, Tangãi Uru-eu-wau-wau

National Geographic Documentary Films is committed to producing provocative and globally relevant stories from the best documentary filmmakers. Hamptons Doc Fest has shown many of their ground-breaking films in the past including Free Solo, Playing with Sharks, Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer, Science Fair and Torn. We are thrilled to add to this prestigious list two new films: The Flagmakers and The Territory.

The Territory provides an immersive on-the-ground look at the tireless fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against the encroaching deforestation brought by farmers and illegal settlers in the Brazilian Amazon. With inspiring cinematography and richly textured sound design, the film takes audiences deep into the Uru-eu-wau-wau community and provides unprecedented access to the farmers and settlers illegally burning and clearing the protected Indigenous land. Partially shot by the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, the film relies on vérité footage captured over three years as the community risks their lives to expose the truth.

Alex Pritz’s directorial debut, The Territory, premiered at Sundance 2022, winning both the Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Documentary Craft.

THE THIEF COLLECTOR

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THE THIEF COLLECTOR

FRI, 12/2, 2:00pm, 94 min BAY STREET THEATER

Q/A with Director Allison Otto, Producer Caryn Capotosto in conversation with Roger Sherman

Director: Allison Otto
Producers: Caryn Capotosto, Joshua A. Kunau, Jill Latiano
Editor: Nick Andert
Cinematographers: Rod Hassler, Matt Ryan

It was an audacious and puzzling art theft. In 1985, Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre,” one of the most valuable paintings of the 20th century, vanished into the Arizona desert after being cut from its frame at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Thirty-two years later, the $160 million painting was rediscovered in the unlikeliest of places.

The Thief Collector is Allison Otto’s first feature documentary. Her short, The Love Bugs, was awarded Best Short Documentary in the 42nd Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards. Her first film, Keeper of the Mountains was named “One of the Best Adventure Films of 2013” by Outside magazine.