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GALA HONORING MATTHEW HEINEMAN

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HAMPTONS DOC FEST HONORS MATTHEW HEINEMAN
WITH THE 2023 PENNEBAKER CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

 

GALA EVENING HONORING MATTHEW HEINEMAN

SATURDAY, DEC 2, BAY STREET THEATER

6:30PM Cocktail/Buffet Reception

8:00PM Pennebaker Award and Interview by former Pennebaker Awardee Liz Garbus with Matthew Heineman

Followed by screening of American Symphony

Tackling difficult and often hard-to- access subjects while addressing great social truths.

It’s impossible to not be charmed by documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman. Despite his many cinematic accomplishments at a young age (he’s now only 40), the Academy Award-nominated and nine- time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker remains unaffected by what he has pulled off–getting access to many subjects that were often off-limits to outsiders while traveling to hot spots throughout the world.

He didn’t start out with a desire to be a gutsy filmmaker. His fascination with American history led him to seek a career as a teacher, but after being rejected by Teach for America, he went on a road trip with his three best friends after graduating from Dartmouth College. As he shot roll after roll of the young people he met during their journey–150 hours of film over three months–he fell in love with the process of filmmaking. Eventually the finished film (Our Time) was sent to HBO and, while they didn’t accept it, they ended up hiring him for the Alzheimer’s Project, where he helped produce one of several films on the subject.

Throughout his illustrious career, Heineman takes on large amorphous subjects and tries to understand them, humanize them, and attempt to make the world care about the topics he picks to explore. He doesn’t select easy or safe subjects; consider that he’s made films about 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), to name a few. Heineman says, you can “speak great social truths through the power of the documentary film.”

Cartel Land, about the Mexican Drug War, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2016. He won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary award from the Director’s Guild of America for the often-brutal film and also the 2015 Courage Under Fire Award by the International Documentary Association.

City of Ghosts came out two years later and took a hard-hitting look at the atrocities in Syria. The Guardian gave the film five stars and called it “the definitive contemporary documentary about the tragedy of Syria.” Moreover, Heineman won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary award from the Director’s Guild of America again, becoming one of only three people to win the prestigious honor twice.

Heineman’s films often take time, both to get access and then to make them. When he starts a new film, Heineman doesn’t know exactly where the story will take him. Retrograde tells the story of the war in Afghanistan, but when he started this project, he didn’t know he’d end up being in Afghanistan as

the U.S. military pulled out. When he was 21, a mentor told him: If you end up with the story you started with, then you weren’t listening along the way. That lesson has stayed with him, and he always goes where the story takes him.

The fact that he has often been in hazardous war zones for his films doesn’t mean he’s a thrill seeker. He says he doesn’t get off on being in dangerous situations and was often scared during the filming of Retrograde. “It was scary getting in a Black Hawk helicopter when you knew there was a chance of getting shot at by a rocket from the Taliban,” he admits. To calm his nerves, he would focus on his camera. “If I’m risking my life,” he added, “I sure as hell better cover it well.”

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POSTHUMOUS LEGACY AWARD TO NANCY BUIRSKI

POSTHUMOUS LEGACY AWARD TO NANCY BUIRSKI

SUN, 12/3, 2:00pm, Tribute followed by screening of The Loving Story, 77 min

SAG HARBOR CINEMA

We at Hamptons Doc Fest – along with the rest of the documentary film community – were shocked and deeply saddened when we learned of the untimely passing of filmmaker Nancy Buirski on August 29.

A graduate of Adelphi University on Long Island, Nancy began her career as a photographer, and as the Foreign Picture Editor at The New York Times, her selection of Kevin Carter’s photo resulted in the paper winning its first ever Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 1994.

Nancy channeled her creative, visual acumen and affinity for documentary storytelling when she founded the Full Frame Documentary Festival in North Carolina in 1998. As the Creative Director of the Festival, she championed the works of innovative filmmakers and built the festival into one of the premiere documentary events in the U.S.

When she transitioned from festival director to film director, Nancy did so with a bang. Between 2011 when she directed her first feature documentary, until her untimely death 12 short years later, she directed and produced six award-winning feature documentaries including a trilogy exploring racial injustice (The Loving Story, The Rape of Recy Taylor and A Crime on the Bayou). Her most recent film Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy premiered in 2022 at the prestigious Telluride and Venice film festivals.

Nancy was a force–a generous, warm and kind human being–unforgettable in so many ways. She built a legacy in many corners of the documentary world, as a filmmaker, festival director, mentor and friend. To paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay: "The presence of her absence is everywhere."

Hamptons Doc Fest is proud to honor Nancy Buirski with our first Legacy Award, presented to her sister Judith Cohen by Susan Margolin and Chris Hegedus. In Nancy’s honor, the festival will screen the Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary, The Loving Story (PG 25) her first feature as writer, director and producer, as well as the short film Daughter of Mine (PG 27), where she acted as Executive Producer and mentor to the filmmaker.

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SHORTS & BREAKFAST BITES: PROGRAM 1

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SHORTS & BREAKFAST BITES: PROGRAM 1

SAT, 12/2, 10:00am, 74 min program BAY STREET THEATER

 
 

Join us for a delicious breakfast to begin your day
then take in a great program of documentary short films.

 

THE ABCs OF BOOK BANNING

27min

Directors: Trish Adlesic, Naz Habtezghi
Producers: Sheila Nevins, Trish Adlesic, Naz Habtezghi

In recent years, more than 2,500 books have been removed from school districts around the U.S., labeled as banned, restricted, or challenged, and made unavailable to millions of students. This film is a love letter to reading and education that begs us to consider what gets lost as books continue to be banned across the country.


THE BRIDGE

12min

Director: Carl Sturgess
Producer: Casey Bannon

Bob Rubin and his wife Stéphane Samuel founded The Bridge Golf Foundation, a year-round sports youth-development program based in Harlem. The students get college prep tutoring and golf lessons and in the summer live and work at Rubin’s club in Bridgehampton, Long Island.


THE BARBER OF LITTLE ROCK

35min

Directors: JohnHoffman, ChristineTurner
Producer: Christina Avalos

John Hoffman in attendance for Q/A

This film explores America’s widening racial wealth gap through the story of Arlo Washington, a barber in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose visionary approach to a just economy is found in the mission of People Trust, the nonprofit community bank he founded.

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SHORTS & BREAKFAST BITES: PROGRAM 2

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SHORTS & BREAKFAST BITES: PROGRAM 2

SUN, 12/3, 10:00am, 104 min program BAY STREET THEATER

 
 

Join us for a delicious breakfast to begin your day
then take in a great program of documentary short films.

 

THE ORCHESTRA CHUCK BUILT

22min

Director: Christopher Stoudt
Producers: Ryan Suffern, Maryann Garger, Bob Logan, Brainz Prasad

Less than 2% of the professional orchestra workforce in the U.S. is black. Chuck Dickerson, a former lawyer-turned-conductor, is on a mission to change that. The film is a loving portrait of a tireless mentor and a testament to the transformative power of music.


ROCKS 4 SALE!

16min

Director: David Dibble
Producer: David Dibble

Director David Dibble in attendance for Q/A

A slice-of-life look at how kids in the former mining town of Silverton, Colorado stay busy in the summer by “mining” and selling rocks to tourists. These “rock stars” learn history, social skills, and become little entrepreneurs while delighting tourists from around the world.


LAST SONG FROM KABUL

30min

Director: Kevin Macdonald
Producers: Katie Buchanan, Sophie Daniel

The devastating reality of Afghanistan after the Taliban occupation: Music has been banned and musicians are forced into hiding. Can a group of daring young musicians find their voices again?


DAUGHTER OF MINE

36min

Director: Vanessa Martino
Producer: Javier Parra

Director Vanessa Martino in attendance for Q/A

A mother works decades to keep her daughter’s killer in prison after she was murdered delivering Girl Scout cookies in 1973. Nancy Buirski was the Executive Producer.