The United States Consulate in Hong Kong is currently exhibiting two paintings by Eric Dever, who has a house in Bridgehampton. “NSIBTW-40” is an oil on canvas measuring 72 inches square; “NSIBTW-22” is an oil on linen of the same dimensions. 

Both paintings are from 2014. They are part of a decade-long series in which the artist has confined his palette to black, red, and white. “Over time, I have come to associate this palette with shifting qualities of weight, energy, and lightness,” Mr. Dever has said.

The works were chosen as part of the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies cultural exchange program. Other East End artists who have been selected for the program include Eric Fischl, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Paton Miller, and Hope Sandrow.

Guild Hall has announced the recipients of the 32nd Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Awards, which will be presented at a benefit dinner on March 13 from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. Eric Fischl, the academy’s president, will host the event with Marty Cohen, chairman of the Guild Hall board, and Andrea Grover, executive director.

The honorees are Susan Stroman, a theater director and choreographer, whose performing arts award will be presented by John Weidman, a librettist and writer for “Sesame Street”; the landscape designer and environmentalist Edwina von Gal, who will receive her visual arts award from the artist and designer Maya Lin, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz, whose literary arts award will be presented by Alice Quinn, executive director of the Poetry Society of America.

In addition, Roy Furman, a Broadway producer, will present the Special Award for Leadership and Philanthropic Endeavors to Cheryl and Michael Minikes.

Tickets for the benefit, which range in price from $100 to $1,500, can be purchased online at guildhall.org.

For those whose taste in films includes the offbeat and independent, the East Hampton Library will present free screenings of six foreign films in its annual Winter International Film Festival, which will open on Sunday at 2 p.m. with “Antonia’s Line,” a Dutch production that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1996. The festival continues on consecutive Sunday afternoons with the exception of Feb. 5. All films have English subtitles.

As in years past, Steven Spataro, the adult reference librarian, has chosen the films from the extensive catalog of Film Movement, a distributor devoted to independent cinema. Mr. Spataro was drawn to film as an adolescent, when he would read Roger Ebert’s book at a library where his mother worked. 

Directed by Marleen Gorris, “Antonia’s Line” opens after World War II, when the strong-willed Antonia returns to her small hometown after inheriting her mother’s farm. She and her free-spirited artist daughter ingratiate themselves with the town’s eccentrics, and as the years pass, full of both love and tragedy, the women foster a circle of strong liberated women.

“Finding Gaston” is a 2014 Spanish-language documentary about the Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio, a one-time law student who studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and returned to Peru to apply his knowledge of international cuisine to his homeland. The film explores the inspirations and dreams of Mr. Acurio, who now owns 44 restaurants around the world and of whom Nick Miroff of The Washington Post wrote, “Calling Acurio a celebrity chef today is like saying Oprah is a talk-show host. He is more of a modern food shaman: artist, interpreter, healer, impresario, and national pitchman.” 

“The Dinner,” directed by Ivano De Matteo, is a 2014 Italian adaptation of the internationally best-selling novel of that title, by the Dutch writer Herman Koch. It focuses on two brothers, their wives, and the monthly dinner they share at a posh restaurant. During the meal, their forced familiarity is shattered by a violent incident that exposes the moral shortcomings of their privileged lives. 

From South Korea comes “My Love, Don’t Cross That River,” a 2014 documentary that was that country’s most successful film of all time. In making the film, the director Jin Moyoung spent 15 months with a couple who had been married for 76 years. The Los Angeles Times critic Katie Walsh called it “a moving tribute to the beauties and mysteries of life and death, an exploration of how growing old gives the gift of time . . .”

Its title may sound oxymoronic, but the 2012 film “The Jewish Cardinal” is based on the true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, who was born in Paris in 1926 to a Jewish family, converted to Catholicism at the age of 13, and eventually became archbishop of Paris, while maintaining his cultural identity as a Jew. When Carmelite nuns establish a convent within Auschwitz — where his mother was killed in 1942 — he is forced to mediate between Jewish and Catholic interests and eventually negotiates the nuns’ departure from the former concentration camp.

The festival will conclude with “Wondrous Boccaccio,” a 2015 film by the Italian brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Loosely based on the stories of “The Decameron,” the film is set in 14th-century, plague-stricken Florence, where 10 young men and women escape to a country estate and spend their days telling stories of love, fate, and resurrection. The film was shot in medieval castles, towers, and ruins in Tuscany and Lazio.

The comedian Joseph Vecsey is back, and Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor has him — as host for new All Star Comedy Shows to be presented tomorrow and Jan. 27 at 8 p.m.

Mr. Vecsey, who has hosted the shows for the last four years, is otherwise busy on the stand-up circuit and hosting his own podcast, “The Call Back,” on which he talks about the art and business of comedy with other comedians, actors, and writers. He is also familiar to television viewers as one of the three lackadaisical “Unmovers” in a series of Optimum Cable spots.

Tomorrow's program will feature Sherrod Small and Christian Finnegan. Born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mr. Small worked as a doorman and bouncer at the Comedy Cellar before becoming a regular performer both there and at Comic Strip Live. He has appeared on VH1's "Best Week Ever" and the "Race Wars" podcast.

Mr. Finnegan has been a fixture on Comedy Central, having starred in his own one-hour special and appeared on “Tough Crowd” and other programs. He has also been on “Conan,” “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson,” and “Today,” among many others.

In July, Mr. Small and Mr. Finnegan debuted as co-hosts of “Black and White,” a comedy-talk show on A&E that explored issues of race relations in America.

Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 at the door.

From the National Theatre Live series, Guild Hall will present an encore screening of the London revival of Harold Pinter’s 1975 play “No Man’s Land” on Saturday at 7 p.m. The production, which was broadcast live from Wyndham’s Theatre on Dec. 15, stars two of the pillars of English theater, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.

The play brings together two aging writers, Hirst and Spooner, in a Hampstead pub, from which they repair to Hirst’s stately house for a few more rounds. Their increasingly drunken conversation turns into a revealing power game that is further complicated by the return home of two sinister young men. 

The Sunday Times called the play “perfect Pinter. A true masterpiece.” Tickets are $18, $16 for members.

The next Guild Gathering, an ongoing series of conversations with creative East Enders, will take place next Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. Titled “Structure,” the program will feature Maziar Behrooz, an architect; Casey Dalene, founder of artunprimed.com, an online gallery; Jess Frost, a curator and archivist, and Raye Levine, a set designer, architect, and actor.

The artists’ presentations will be followed by a reception. The program is free, but reservations are required.

The Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue will hold open auditions for Bernard Slade’s mystery “An Act of the Imagination” on Sunday and Monday from 6 to 8 p.m., at the Quogue Community Hall. There are roles for three men and four women. 

Appointments are not necessary, and readings will be from the script. Actors have been asked to bring a headshot and résumé. Both Equity and non-Equity actors will be welcomed.

Rehearsals will begin in February, and the performances will take place from March 23 through April 9. More details are available at 631-766-0537.

“The Money Shot,” a play by Neil LaBute, which Variety’s Scott Foundas called “an acid-tongued showbiz satire” when it premiered Off Broadway in 2014, will have a two-and-a-half week run at the Southampton Cultural Center starting next Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

A playwright, film director, and screenwriter, Mr. LaBute has been labeled misanthropic and his work likened to that of David Mamet. The film “In the Company of Men,” for example, which he wrote and directed, was about two business executives who decide to exact revenge on the female gender by ruining the life of the most innocent girl they can find. 

With 10 feature films to his credit, Mr. LaBute is no stranger to Hollywood. “Money Shot” is set in the Hollywood Hills house of a noted actress whose career has been in decline since she came out as a lesbian and her girlfriend, an assistant editor with a film degree from Brown. Their guests are an aging action star and his wife, a thin blonde half his age.

The actress and aging star have been cast in “Jackhammer,” a film by a respected Belgian director they hope will reboot their careers, and a meeting is held to discuss the scene they are to shoot the following day. Because it will include having real sex on camera, they want to get the approval of their mates. Needless to say, the meeting starts nasty and goes downhill from there, but the zingers let loose “make up in belly laughs and inspired performances what it lacks in nuance or novelty,” according to Mr. Foundas. The center does not recommend the play for children under 17.

The cultural center’s production will star Bonnie Grice, the doyenne of WPPB, Joseph Marshall, Tamara Salkin, and Kristin Whiting, and be directed by Joan M. Lyons. Performances will take place Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 2:30 through Feb. 5. Tickets are $22, $12 for students under 21.

January is a surprising month on the South Fork. While the crowds die down and the only bluster is the wind (and snow), there are often quiet but significant efforts to draw full-time residents and weekenders away from their hearths and out onto the scene again.

In addition to other off-season exhibitions, there is now in Bridgehampton some new life bubbling to the surface at the Kathryn Markel Gallery. Each year Ms. Markel closes down operations during the winter, but makes her space available to independent curators and artist collectives. For the month of January, the gallery will be home to Folioeast, a mostly online assemblage of East End artists represented by Coco Myers, an East Hampton native, who after years in the media world came back several years ago to live here with her family.

She will present two shows. The first, which opened on Jan. 7 but due to that day’s snowstorm will be celebrated with a reception on Saturday, is a blend of abstraction and figuration in several mediums. Judging by the choices of the artwork on view through Sunday and a preview of the upcoming installation, it is a well-edited mix of some of the more innovative artists working here.

Markel is a small gallery, and the works are small as well, with 11 artists represented on every section of white space available. The artists offer a mix of abstraction and figuration, some, like Toby Haynes, presenting naturalism, and others, such as Dan Welden and Will Ryan, non-objective art. Jane Martin offers a bit of both. All have a strong presence, and the installation works to bracket the more exuberant works with the more reserved and cerebral.

Margaret Garrett is represented by two colorful works on paper. “Lean” is a collage of yellow paper, in a kind of floral motif, pasted on a royal-blue ground. “Tuning Fields” is dominated by red tones, and looks both completely abstract and vaguely representative of a field of tulips.

Nearby, Janet Jennings offers two watercolors of stacked rectangular planes in faded translucent tones. There are also two small canvases, at first glance apparently abstract and then the purified essence of landscapes, the overall silvery hues of which are scored by acid tones of green and orange.

On another wall, Mr. Welden and Mary Ellen Bartley balance each other, with the cool linear precision of the books she photographs from their tops and sides setting off his spare but relatively more colorful mixed-media works.

Ms. Bartley’s eye for the abstract in the photographed image is shared by Carolyn Conrad and Bastienne Schmidt. Ms. Conrad’s photos and watercolor of her familiar abstracted barn structures show a movement away from her earlier versions in moody and rich colored backgrounds. These are stark and spare in tones of gray and white. Ms. Schmidt’s abstract geometric photographs in subtle tones tap into a similar urge.

Mr. Ryan maintains the appetite for abstraction in his graphic watercolors, which add a pop of color and playfulness to the mix. Similarly, Mr. Haynes’s realistic depictions of cows and Barbara Thomas’s homage to trees are richly colored and highlighted in varying shades of blue. Upstairs, a few selections from her series “The Day” are on view with Ms. Martin’s “Artifacts,” mixed-media works on paper. The “Artifacts” hint at meaning. One could be a stage set, another looks like the prow of a ship, but the intent and the actual subject is obscured. They beguile with their striking ornamentation and air of mystery. 

Additional works by Mr. Welden and Ms. Jennings round out the room.

The only sculptor in the crowd, Sarah Jaffe Turnbull, is represented by a group of metallic glazed table pieces that are ceramic but hint at bronze. The forms of “Accord” and “Solo” suggest vessels, but the fissures and seams that don’t meet would never hold contents. “Rosetta” could be an assemblage of geometric shapes, but it is suggestive of other objects; musical instruments perhaps. She is displayed with some of Ms. Martin’s mostly naturalistic video stills and her abstract works in other mediums.

This show, which will  be open Saturday and Sunday and can be also viewed by appointment, is part one of a two-part exhibition. Part two, opening on Jan. 20, will feature works by 11 artists: Roisin Bateman, Philippe Cheng, Christine Matthai, Perry Burns, Denise Gale, Francine Fleischer, Mark Webber, Maeve D’Arcy, Rosario Varela, Sue Heatley, and Janice Stanton.

Although a final checklist is still in formation, Ms. Myers offered a preview of parts of the second exhibition, including Ms. Stanton’s collages, which incorporate groupings of seemingly recognizable objects and more idiosyncratic creations. Mr. Cheng will show his photographic abstractions, which lately are darker and bluer than the images in his recent book. Mr. Webber’s small minimalist sculptures and Christine Matthai’s word-based constructions will be on display as well.

The East Hampton Library has launched Story Salon East, a weekly program based on Story Salon in Los Angeles, a live storytelling venue. Every Saturday morning at 11, seven people will each tell a tale of up to seven minutes in length, a format that brings to mind the popular PechaKucha series at the Parrish Art Museum.

They can be fact or fiction, serious or funny, autobiographical, read from the printed page, or told as if in conversation. There are no reviews, critiques, or judgments about either the content or the delivery. The idea is to share stories with a supportive audience. Steve Sobel, a retired dentist and stage manager from East Hampton, will host the programs. Interested storytellers can register by calling 631-324-0222, extension 3, or by visiting the library’s adult reference desk.

The Springs Community Theater will present four performances of the play “Steel Magnolias” at the Springs Presbyterian Church tomorrow and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Friday, Jan. 27, and Jan. 28, also at 7.

Robert Harling’s 1987 play is about the bond a group of women share in a small Southern town and how they cope with the death of one of their own. The story is based on the death of Mr. Harling’s sister, Susan Harling Robinson, from complications of Type 1 diabetes in 1985.

The steel magnolias of the title are six women — M’Lynn, Shelby, Clairee, Ouiser, Annelle, and Truvy — who gather regularly over a period of three years at Truvy’s beauty parlor to gossip about one another’s lives and those of their neighbors.

Barbara Mattson and Jayne Freedman, both residents of the hamlet, founded the Springs Community Theater in 2005. “Steel Magnolias” is the group’s eighth production. Tickets, which can be secured at ovationtix.com or by calling 516-658-5735, are $20, $15 for senior citizens and students.