Forecast: A Film Festival Whirlwind

By Carissa Katz

(10/11/2007)    This year’s Hamptons International Film Festival, which opens on Wednesday night, will bring films and filmmakers from nearly a dozen countries to the South Fork for a four-and-a-half-day whirlwind of screenings, panel discussions, and festival-related parties.

    “Our foreign pictures are stellar as usual, but our American films are terrific, too,” said Josh Koury, a programmer with the festival.

    Gianna Chachere, the managing director, agreed. “We have as many international films as ever, but the American films are holding their own as far as interest and the strength of the work,” she said Monday.

    The festival opens with the world premiere of Bob Balaban’s “Bernard and Doris,” starring Susan Sarandon as the billionaire Doris Duke and Ralph Feinnes as the butler to whom she eventually left her fortune. Mr. Balaban is a member of the festival’s board of directors and has lent his talent and humor to the event for many years.

    The closing film, which will be shown on Oct. 20 as well as on the final day, will be “August Rush,” directed by Kirsten Sheridan and starring Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Terrence Howard, and Robin Williams.

    Those movies are among the higher-profile pictures being featured this year, and tickets to them cost more than for most — $35 as opposed to the usual $12 ticket price. Both are scheduled for wide release in the coming months, as are most of the 14 other films in the Spotlight category, which is where the bigger names will be found.

    Some might ask, if the film will be back in theaters soon, why go see it now, for more money?

    There’s something fun about being among the first to get a peek at a new movie, and in many cases the filmmakers and actors will also attend the screenings to talk about their work in question-and-answer sessions afterward.

    The director Sidney Lumet, for example, will be here with his picture, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” John Cusack, the actor, will be in town to help promote his “Martian Child,” directed by Menno Meyjes and also starring Amanda Peet. Vanessa Redgrave, who is being honored with a career achievement in acting award, will accompany her film “The Shell Seekers,” directed by Piers Haggard, to the festival.

    Ms. Redgrave and Mr. Lumet will also be interviewed in two “A Conversation With . . .” programs at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor next Thursday and Friday, Oct. 19, respectively.

    The Spotlight films are always popular with audiences, but they’re more of a bonus than what the festival is all about. “A lot of the larger celebrity-driven films, they’re fantastic, but they seem to get attention anyway,” Mr. Koury said. He likes to give attention to first-time directors and films not attached to big names. “The film festival really has an opportunity to nurture these films and directors,” he said.

    One way the festival does this is through its Golden Starfish Awards, which include prizes for independent narrative features, documentaries, and short films. The Golden Starfish films are “our discovery section,” Mr. Koury said. These are films that may be on the cusp of something big or may never be distributed at all, and how they are received at festivals like this one will help to determine their future.

    Five narrative films are competing for the biggest of these prizes, $185,000 worth of movie-related goods and services. In the running this year are “Elvis and Annabelle” by Will Geiger, starring Blake Lively, Max Minghella, Mary Steenburgen, Keith Carradine, and Joe Mantegna; Chaz Thorne’s “Just Buried” from Canada; “Kings,” an Irish film by Tom Collins starring Colm Meaney; Chris Eigeman’s “Turn the River,” with Famke Janssen and Rip Torn, and Birgit Moller’s “Valerie,” from Germany.

    In the five Golden Starfish documentaries, audiences will find three portrait pictures, Marshall Fine’s “Do You Sleep in the Nude,” about the columnist Rex Reed, Steven-Charles Jaffe’s “Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird,” about the New Yorker cartoonist who lives in Sag Harbor, and “I Am an Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA” by Mikaela Beardsley.

    “Our documentary competition is fabulous,” Mr. Koury said. “Documentaries have come a long way in the past 10 years,” and the documentaries in the festival this year are testament to that, he said.

    “I love documentaries. They’re my favorites,” he said.

    This year’s lineup boasts almost two dozen feature-length documentaries, but one of the most politically poignant and important, Mr. Koury said, is Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro’s “Body of War,” which will have its American premiere here.

    The movie, which follows a wounded soldier who served in Iraq and now speaks out against the war, has gotten a lot of attention at international festivals. “It’s such an honor to have that film because it’s obviously going to take off,” Mr. Koury said.

    The directors will be at the premiere on Friday, Oct. 19, to introduce and discuss it.

    Other politically provocative films — in the festival’s Conflict and Resolution category — touch on the subject of the Iraq war, the “untouchables” in India, Korean sex slaves during World War II, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

    One of the more noteworthy of those is Hesham Issawi’s feature “American East,” the first Arab-American film about Arab-Americans to be screened in the United States. It is the story of an Egyptian immigrant who dreams of opening a Middle Eastern restaurant with his Jewish friend.

    Film buffs with a taste for foreign movies will find plenty to choose from next week. From Germany and the Netherlands, there’s Angelina Maccarone’s “Vivere.” “Caramel” by Nadine Labaki was made in France and Lebanon. Also from France is Ronald Harwood’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

    Sam Eduard Garbarski’s “Irina Palm” was made in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and France. There’s a Chinese film, the documentary “Please Vote for Me” by Weijun Chen; one from Denmark, “The Substitute” by Ole Bornedal, and, from Germany, “Yella” by Christian Petzgold and “Four Minutes” by Chris Kraus.

    “Most foreign films don’t get screened in the United States,” said D’Arcy Drollinger of Springer Associates, which handles public relations for the festival. “These festivals are the only time you are going to be able to see these things.”

    The same goes for the short films, some of which will be shown before feature-length movies and some of which have their own programs. “A lot of times, for a first-time filmmaker, that’s their calling card,” Mr. Drollinger said.

    Even as the festival’s Spotlight section has grown and taken some attention away from work by emerging directors, the festival is still committed to the “independent” in its name.

    “Some of the spotlights, too, are still grounded in that independent spirit,” Mr. Koury said. “Everything has an independent spirit.”

    The festival will run from Wednesday through Sunday, Oct. 21. Tickets can be purchased online at www.hamptonsfilmfest.org, by phone, or at the box office at Design Within Reach on Park Place in East Hampton. The box office is open from noon to 6 p.m. weekdays, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.

    A full list of films can be found on the festival’s Web site and in a film guide distributed this week in The East Hampton Star.