Claes Brondal, who organizes and hosts the weekly jam session at Bay Burger in Sag Harbor, is expanding his musical reach with a new series that will launch on Saturday at the Southampton Arts Center.

“Latin From Manhattan — Afro-Cuban Jazz and Beyond!” is the first in a monthly series that Mr. Brondal promises will be “eclectic, hip, and relevant to young and old.” The 7 p.m. concert will celebrate the unique sound and development of Afro-Cuban jazz, which developed in New York City in the 1940s and remains a vibrant musical form.

The jam session at Bay Burger “is in such a good place as it is, but if I want to do it slightly bigger and with more music, and reach a larger audience, I need to do it somewhere else,” Mr. Brondal said last week. “I like the intimacy of the jam session — it’s a format where people jam and sit in. This will be a concert where the aim is to make it eclectic, stylistically, and also in terms of musicians. It’s not confined to jazz.” 

The music of the Afro-Cuban genre’s pioneers, including Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo, Arturo (Chico) O’Farrill, Mario Bauza, and Francisco Raul Gutierrez Grillo, better known as Machito, will be celebrated on Saturday. Along with Mr. Brondal, who plays drums, the performers are Ada Rovatti on saxophone, Alex Sipiagin on trumpet, Nestor Milanes on piano, Steve Shaughnessy on bass, and Geraldo Flores on congas.

The doors will open at 6:30, when those attending will be able to sample the flavors of Latin America with hors d’oeuvres and snacks provided by Union Cantina in Southampton. The concert will be recorded for “The Jam Session Radio Hour,” which is aired on WPPB 88.3 FM.

The series will continue on Nov. 12 with “The Music of Mali: Yacouba Sissoko and LUMA.” Mr. Sissoko plays the kora, a West African instrument with 21 strings. He has recorded with Harry Belafonte and Paul Simon, among others. Mr. Brondal, who described LUMA (Life Unity Music Amplified) as playing original world/groove/funk music, is joined in that group by Daniel Lauter on saxophone, Jeff Marshall on bass, and Bill Smith on piano. The artist appearing at the Dec. 17 installment of the series is to be announced. 

“This will be a monthly thing, in collaboration with the Southampton Arts Center,” Mr. Brondal said. “Each month will be a different style, different scene, different musicians.” 

Tickets for “Latin From Manhattan — Afro-Cuban Jazz and Beyond!” are $10, $5 for children and students, and are available at latinfrommanhattanconcert.bpt.me.

“Unlocking the Cage,” which won this year’s Zelda Penzel Giving Voice to the Voiceless award at the Hamptons International Film Festival, is a film about a lawyer’s quest to give certain human rights to animals.

Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, award-winning filmmakers who have a house in Sag Harbor, directed the film and received the award before its screening on Sunday afternoon. They spoke about the evolution of their awareness of animal rights issues in a panel discussion after the screening.

“My daughter told us we had to bring a dog back from California . . . and she was right. Our lives changed enormously,” Mr. Pennebaker said about his devotion to animals. “He has since died, but he’s in my mind every day.”

Ms. Hegedus said their awareness of animal rights issues was part of a longer process that culminated in meeting Steven Wise, the subject of their film, who was also in attendance on Sunday. “Meeting Steve changed the way we live, the way we eat, and the way we think about other animals,” she said. Jane Goodall was another important inspiration.

“I grew up with cats and dogs that I loved terribly, but it wasn’t until I read Peter Singer’s book [‘Animal Liberation’] in 1980 that I realized there was a problem,” said Mr. Wise. Almost immediately he began to take what he calls “non-human animals” as clients.

The film documents his attempts to have courts begin to examine “the personhood of non-human animals, suing on behalf of chimpanzees so that they might live with more autonomy while still being in captivity.

To make his case, he needed evidence of both the emotional and intellectual life of the animals he was representing. He also needed to find some in captivity whose circumstances would not simply be an issue of animal welfare, but illustrative of the kind of incarceration that impinged on their autonomy, in a way similar to human prisoners. 

The tactic he developed was to sue for a writ of habeas corpus for the chimps, arguing that these rights, in a narrow interpretation, could apply to them. Such rights would allow a court or jury to determine whether their captivity qualified as an unjust incarceration. In order for such rights to apply, the courts had to consider whether his clients were eligible for personhood the way corporations and other entities have been deemed in light of recent legal rulings.

Mr. Wise chose a few chimpanzees living in different circumstances in New York State, including two being used for research at Stony Brook University. Two of the more elderly chimps died before their cases could get to court. The remaining two, Hercules and Leo from Stony Brook, became the focus of his case. He ended up in the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, but fell short of getting his argument accepted.

He kept trying, eventually convincing a lower court judge that there was merit in the argument, but even her ruling fell short of his ultimate goal. It turns out that personhood, as a legal concept, not only comes with rights, but also responsibilities, ones that would be hard to apply to animals, even those high on the evolutionary chain.

Still, Mr. Wise has shown marked progress in reframing this debate. As his cases have progressed over the years, popular sentiment has also moved more toward his view of animals. Recent research findings and increasing scientific evidence of animal intelligence and emotional maturity in creatures such as primates and dolphins will support his arguments and could make his cases more successful in the future.

“I did think it was going to get this far,” Mr. Wise said in response to a question from the audience. “And it’s going to get a lot farther.”

With impeccable timing, the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue will open its 2016-2017 season with “November,” David Mamet’s scathing satire on American presidential politics, next Thursday evening at 7. The play will run through Nov. 6.

As relevant today as when it premiered on Broadway in 2008, “November” visits the first-term president Charles Smith during the week before Election Day. With approval ratings near zero and without the support of his re-election committee, he is running out of money and his wife is preparing to leave him. Grim as things appear, President Smith hopes the traditional presidential pardon of the Thanksgiving turkey can save his candidacy.

The play features Mr. Mamet’s trademark politically incorrect, profanity-laden style in its characterization of the egomania, moral elasticity, and hunger for power that drive electoral politics. 

Show times are Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 2:30. An additional matinee has been scheduled for Nov. 5. Tickets are $30, $25 for senior citizens (except on Saturdays), $15 for those under 35, and $10 for students under 21.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present a new All Star Comedy show, hosted by Joseph Vecsey, tomorrow at 8 p.m. Mr. Vecsey, a stand-up veteran, continues to turn up on television and YouTube as one of the UnMovers in new spots for Optimum Cable TV. He also hosts “The Call Back,” a podcast that features interviews with noted comedians.

His three guests are Ken Krantz, who has his own show at Gotham Comedy Club and has been featured on SiriusXM radio; Gary Vider, who first hit the New York comedy circuit when he was fired from his receptionist job, and Billy Prinsell, a regular at Caroline’s on Broadway and one of Comedy Central’s top comics to watch in 2015. Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 the day of the show.

On Saturday, the musician Alfredo Merat will channel the spirit of Jacques Brel, the Belgian singer, songwriter, and actor, in “Brel by Alfredo.”

Brel died in 1978, and this performance coincides with the 50-year anniversary of his farewell concerts at the Olympia Theater in Paris, part of the acclaimed artist’s long goodbye from live performances. 

Mr. Merat, a popular performer of Latin music on the South Fork who lives in Springs, was born in Madrid and grew up in France. In a 90-minute performance, he will sing in French and speak about Mr. Brel’s life in English.

Tickets for “Brel by Alfredo” are $25 and are available at the Bay Street box office or at baystreet.org.

The Mandala Yoga Center in Amagansett will present a concert of Merasi Indian music on Sunday evening at 6. The Merasi musicians use music to share their cultural heritage and bring to life stories of Indian history. Their infectious rhythms spring from 38 generations of musicians who have performed for Rajput kings and at temple festivals. 

Tickets are $35 and will benefit the Musical Narrative Project.

The Perlman Music Program on Shelter Island will present an alumni recital on Saturday at 5 p.m. by the cellist Yves Dharamraj, who has appeared with orchestras in Texas, Wisconsin, Florida, and the Dominican Republic, as well as Juilliard in New York City. Tickets are $25, free for children.

On Sunday at 2:30 p.m., students and alumni will perform a free concert of classical masterworks, featuring John Root on piano.

The Salon Series, the classical music program of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, will open its fall series tomorrow at 6 p.m. with a concert by William McNally, a pianist whose repertory ranges from classical to ragtime.

The first half of the program will feature preludes by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff: the Prelude in C-sharp minor (Lento), Op. 3, No. 2, and the complete Preludes, Op. 23. After a brief intermission, Mr. McNally will play a selection of pieces by the iconic ragtime composers Scott Joplin and Arthur Schutt, new ragtime-inspired works by the modern composers Vincent Matthew Johnson and Carter Pann, and his own “Blue Donkey Rag.”

Mr. McNally first took the stage at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall at the age of 9. Since then he has performed at venues and festivals throughout the United States, and he recently completed his doctorate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Upcoming programs will feature Alexandria Le, a pianist, on Friday, Oct. 14, Sybarite5, a string quartet, on Oct. 21, and Nadejda Vlaeva, a pianist, on Oct. 28. Tickets for each concert are $20, $10 for members, and each program will be followed by a reception.

The Southampton Cultural Center’s Center Stage will present Christopher Hampton’s translation of Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” from next Thursday through Oct. 30. The Tony Award-winning play, which is subtitled “A Comedy — Without the Manners,” involves two sets of parents who meet to discuss an altercation between their sons. As it progresses, the evening dissolves into chaos as the parents become increasingly childish and brutally truthful. 

Michael Disher will direct the cast of Edward Kassar, John Leonard, Catherine Maloney, and Frances Sherman. Performances will take place Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 2:30. Tickets are $22 for adults and $12 for students under 21. Dinner-theater packages will be available for some performances.

It isn’t officially part of the Hamptons International Film Festival, but a short film with local ties will be screened at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Saturday.

“Moondog Airwaves,” a 33-minute film that defies categorization but certainly has an element of horror, will play at noon, 1:30, and 3 p.m. Admission is free, and free doughnuts from Grindstone Coffee and Donuts will be served at each screening’s conclusion.

Ari Selinger, a resident of Sag Harbor and the Bronx, wrote and directed “Moondog Airwaves” for his senior thesis at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Shot at Sag Harbor’s Bay Burger but set in “Moontown,” somewhere in the rural South, on Independence Day 1995, the film depicts a fast-food worker and his friend, and a bizarre chain of events that ensue upon the arrival of two patrons and one very unusual visitor.

That visitor is played by Steven Ogg, a Canadian actor who became known for his role in the videogame “Grand Theft Auto V” shortly after “Moondog Airwaves” was shot. “Our first initial burst of interest came from fans of Steven Ogg,” Mr. Selinger said, “who became an overnight celebrity while I was editing the film.” 

The story was written, Mr. Selinger said, “at lightning speed” toward the end of 2012, when he decided to abandon his initial thesis idea. “I didn’t have much time to think if it was good or not, and kept going on whether or not I thought it entertained me.” 

The experience has taught him that working under pressure, with a deadline looming, can yield the best result. “I would tell all filmmakers, based on experience, you’ve got to do it that way. Instead of analyzing, you’re getting the organic ingredients that come from you only. The short amount of time we had helped a lot.”

Filming happened quickly, too, a few months after “Moondog Airwaves” was written. “Post-production lasted about a year,” Mr. Selinger said. “Then I took a year off to heal.”

He praised an instructor at the Tisch School, the Ethiopian filmmaker Yemane Demissie, for his own passion for filmmaking. “In my eyes he is the greatest filmmaker of all time,” he said. “I learned more in a year than I did from Hitchcock, from Jim Jarmusch. I was really lucky to have had a special teacher. It was a magical experience.”

South Fork residents and visitors will recognize local scenery in another Selinger short, “Deuce and a Quarter,” which was filmed on Napeague and Montauk.

He encourages others to do the same. “You can make films cheap now. Even if it’s not going to make you money but you love it, do it. And trust your community — that was how we got this movie made. If you’re nice to them, they’re beyond nice to you, and you don’t need a $10 million budget.” 

In particular, he said, Joe and Liza Tremblay of Bay Burger are responsible for the creation of “Moondog Airwaves.” “Besides their gift of divine homemade ice cream, they have been the film’s knights in shining armor,” Mr. Selinger said. “Without them, it’s safe to say I’d be working at a Starbucks right now.”

From anarchy to bombings, illness, and death, a random sampling of documentary films from this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival seems, on the surface at least, to be a grim affair. Yet, there are tales of hope and triumph as well. Following are some glimpses of what will be screened and what cannot be missed.

“American Anarchist”

CharlieSiskel

East Hampton, Saturday, 6:15 p.m., and Sunday, 11:45 a.m.

“The Anarchist Cookbook,” written by William Powell in 1969, when he was 19, and published by Lyle Stuart a year later, is a how-to book that includes instructions on making explosives, counterfeiting money, picking locks, credit card fraud, and many other forms of violence and lawbreaking. Since its publication, it has been found in the possession of the Columbine killers, Timothy McVeigh, Croatian hijackers, the abortion clinic bomber Thomas Spinks, and many other criminals.

The filmmaker Charlie Siskel tracked down Mr. Powell in the remote French village where he lived until his death earlier this year at the age of 65. The result is “American Anarchist,” an extended interview with Mr. Powell, a thoughtful, articulate man who lived outside the United States for his final 36 years and devoted most of his life to teaching emotionally disturbed children and young adults.

The film includes conversations with his wife, Ochan, archival film footage from his teaching work abroad, and home movies from his childhood, but its primary thrust, which intensifies as the film progresses, is to get Mr. Powell to take responsibility for the ways his book has been used by a long list of terrorists and killers.

At one point, confronted with the example of the Columbine killers, Mr. Powell admits he felt responsible. “But I didn’t do it,” he says. “Somebody else with a disturbed sense of reality did it.” However, as he later points out while discussing the ongoing impact of the book on his life, “My skeleton is not in the closet. It’s in print.”

There is a great deal of fascinating material in the film, including Mr. Powell’s motivation, as a young radical, for writing the book, the refusal of its publisher to take it out of print, as Mr. Powell later requested, and his reflections, as a teacher of disturbed children, on why school shootings have become all too common. 

At one point in the film, Ms. Powell accuses Mr. Siskel of asking leading questions, and Mr. Powell also confronts the filmmaker for being provocative. 

While the film is a fascinating portrait of a complicated man, it suffers from almost browbeating its subject into conflating a 19-year-old kid with the reflective man he became over the subsequent 45 years during which he tried but failed to put behind him an act he genuinely regrets.                         

Mark Segal

“Disturbing the Peace”

Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young

East Hampton, tomorrow, 1 p.m.; Southampton, Sunday, 12:30 p.m. Panel discussion to follow tomorrow’s screening.

If it were a pitch to a Hollywood studio — a group of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters make the transition from enemies to peace activists — it would be rejected as far-fetched. Yet “Disturbing the Peace,” a documentary by Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young, chronicles that very transition, focusing on four Israelis and four Palestinians who formed Combatants for Peace, a bipartisan organization dedicated to a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Interviews with the eight principals are threaded throughout the film. They are riveting, as the four Palestinians and four Israelis give vent to their harsh assessments of the other side. Jamel Qassas states, “Israel’s creation was our catastrophe,” while Avner Wishnitzer, a former Israeli soldier, speaks of growing up with “war stories, war memories, all around.”

What emerges from the early interviews is not only an inability on each side to understand the other, but deep anger and paranoia and a sense that the views are irreconcilable. However, after the first 30 minutes, fissures appear in each of the principals’ rigidity.

A key event occurs when several Israeli soldiers decide not to operate in the Occupied Territories. The Palestinians contact those soldiers and ask for a meeting, which eventually leads to the founding of Combatants for Peace in 2006. 

The film then cuts to 2015, when the group has grown dramatically, and several mass gatherings are documented. As encouraging as these scenes are, the opposition of masses of Israelis to reconciliation, expressed at the demonstrations, makes clear what Sulaiman Khatib, who was imprisoned for 10 years at the age of 13 for attacking two Israelis, says about the cooperative effort: “We see it as a long-distance run, and we will continue to go on with it.” 

As the film progresses, it becomes apparent that the interviews were filmed in the present, after the formation of Combatants for Peace. The principals re-enacted the views they held before the filmmakers began their work. Similarly, some of the events that informed their earlier views are also re-enacted. None of this detracts from the power of the film; indeed, re-enactment, along with archival news footage, enables the filmmakers to cover with a sense of immediacy events that took place over many years. 

Mark Segal

“God Knows Where I Am”

Todd Wider and Jed Wider

East Hampton, tomorrow, 5:45 p.m.; Bay Street Theater, Sunday, 3 p.m.

“God Knows Where I Am,” a documentary produced and directed by the veteran documentarians and brothers Todd and Jedd Wider, follows a vibrant woman named Linda Bishop who becomes increasingly delusional but refuses to admit she is ill. 

Through videos, we meet her as a smart child in a happy family, then watch her later in life as she is arrested, treated for mental illness, goes on and off medication, and disappears, leaving a 13-year-old daughter at home. 

Eventually confined to a New Hampshire mental institution by the court, she nevertheless retains legal charge of her life, orders that no one speak to her family, and refuses to take medications. The institution, deciding it cannot help her, discharges her unconditionally. 

It is October, and she wanders, homeless and apparently penniless, until she finds an abandoned farmhouse, where she remains hidden through an unusually cold New Hampshire winter without electricity and nothing but apples to eat until her death. 

The filmmakers use this grim story to arouse concern about the failure of society to treat and care adequately for the mentally ill and homeless. Bravely speaking for the camera are Ms. Bishop’s sister and daughter. A local policeman who was among those who found the body, a deputy medical examiner, and a few others provide context. Ms. Bishop died in January; her body was found in May.

This sad story was hard to capture visually. The filmmakers relied largely on views of green fields, woodlands, a brook, falling snow, and the farmhouse’s empty rooms. Slow-moving camerawork and original orchestral music express the mood.

A surprise for East Hamptoners who follow the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game is Lori Singer, a game participant and well-known actress who has the film’s principal role even though she is not seen. Ms. Bishop wrote in a notebook daily, and the actress reads from them emotionally throughout the film. Toward the end, as Ms. Bishop is dying of starvation, she writes, “Don’t worry, Linda, God sees everything . . . God knows where I am.” 

Helen S. Rattray

“Marathon: 

The Patriots Day Bombing”

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg

East Hampton, tomorrow, 5:30 p.m., and Saturday, 11:15 a.m.

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I’m a fan of the documentary form, but why go see an hour-and-46-minute film about an event I watched unfold in real time on television and feel I’m plenty familiar with, like the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing?

Understandable, but that would be a mistake, as in this case the filmmakers focus on what the survivors have to say, in direct and rawly emotional terms, about their recoveries from lost limbs and rattled psyches, the rigors of rehab, the way their expectations for their futures were upended, and the difficult new realities of their home lives. All without a single sonorous intonation from a narrator.

The directors weave together the disparate stories of mother and daughter, two brothers, one a roofer and the other a sheet metal worker, and, at the film’s core, two newlyweds whose recoveries head in opposite directions. (As one Walter Reed doctor puts it, with a bomb blast injury, people think you simply put on a prosthetic and get on with your life, when in reality all manner of complications are the norm.) 

This is all skillfully done and edited. Superficial to say, given the context, but as this is a visual medium, attractive aerial shots denote shifts in location. And those never get old.

The production is a collaboration with The Boston Globe, which won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the bombing, and one nice touch has reporters being interviewed in a tight little canyon of stacked newsprint. Journalists, like lawyers, these days are bottom dwellers when it comes to the public’s esteem, but here a photographer seeks out a young woman he captured supine on the sidewalk, pale and near death, pressure being applied to a spurting artery. He shakily asks for forgiveness for invading her privacy, for showing her so vulnerable. One of many moments of grace brought on by this senseless act of terrorism.            

Baylis Greene

“Santoalla”

Andrew Becker, Daniel Mehrer

East Hampton, tomorrow, 2:45 p.m., and Sunday, 5 p.m.

When Martin and Margo, a Dutch couple in the flush of young love, on a road trip through Europe in search of a place to put down roots on the land, take the turnoff to a virtually abandoned village in the Galician countryside, they see only a picturesque place full of potential. 

Life alongside the single family that remains in Santoalla is at first copasetic, if not friendly, but the fault lines in that benign coexistence slowly become clear in this documentary that looks back at the years leading to Martin’s disappearance, and its aftermath.

An aging Margo, still painstakingly raising her animals and working the land, speaks calmly and directly, but with great emotion, about how the village, one of a number across Spain left behind when residents migrated elsewhere, was slowly transformed from an idyll to a place where the only people within miles ignored one another — at best — as tensions between the two families festered and grew. 

Martin’s dreams of creating an ecological center and developing rural tourism, and his ongoing projects to make a life in sync with nature a little easier, are met with increasing opposition, and the film, in clips taken over time in Santoalla, takes viewers through the disintegrating relationship as well as Martin’s increasing obsession with the other family’s disapproval. 

A struggle over land rights and money ratchets things up, and one day Martin never comes home. A grieving Margo picks along stony paths in the village, past the house of the neighbors she suspects of doing him harm, and we go into the rustic church with the neighbor woman as she tut-tuts about the other family. When the crime and its perpetrator are revealed, it is no surprise.

By then, we have seen youthful idealism, enthusiasm, and hard work turn into stoicism, righteousness, anger, conflict, violence, and tragedy in the little dot-on-the-map isolated village, a microcosmic portrayal, in the two families’ stories, of so many other stories writ large.         

 Joanne Pilgrim

“Supergirl”

Jessie Auritt

East Hampton, Sunday, 2 p.m., and Monday, 2:30 p.m.

If ever the comic book heroine Supergirl were real, her alter ego would probably be Naomi Kutin, a teenage Orthodox Jewish girl from New Jersey who loves wearing mismatched socks.

Hence the title of the documentary “Supergirl,” an unusual coming-of-age story that follows Naomi in the years after she set a world weight lifting record at the age of 9. The Kickstarter-funded film, directed by Jessie Auritt, will make its world premiere on Sunday at the East Hampton Cinema. 

“Supergirl” also features the rest of the Kutin family, a down-to-earth bunch who are easy to root for as Naomi’s story unfolds. There is Ed, her father, himself a power lifting enthusiast who oversees his daughter’s physical strength training. There is Neshama, her mother, a survivor of childhood abuse who instills emotional strength in her daughter. And there is Ari, her younger brother, who is on the autism spectrum and copes with bullying, yet takes up competitive power lifting himself.

Given the emphasis on body-positive messages for youth in the media today, the narrative holds particular relevance for an adolescent audience. In the film, Naomi, who lifted 215 pounds at the age of 10 while weighing just 93 pounds herself, still says she looks fat, gets self-conscious over her haircut, and feels uncool. She figures out how to gracefully deal with hurtful online comments posted by strangers on her YouTube videos; there are some adults who could stand to take a few lessons from this tough kid.

Supported by storytelling that feels natural, there is inspiration to be found in watching this “Supergirl” move past disappointment, illness, and injury toward an ultimate path of growth, faith, and empowerment.      

Christine Sampson