Today is Andrea Grover’s first day as executive director of Guild Hall, replacing Ruth Appelhof, who is retiring. Ms. Grover, who comes to Guild Hall as an active member of the East End arts community, has already helped transform one local institution, the Parrish Art Museum, where she was curator of special projects for several years and was responsible for this summer’s popular “Radical Seafaring” exhibition.

Days before she would actually set foot in Guild Hall as its captain, it was easy to speak with her about the general state of the arts and her broad vision for the East Hampton institution, but it was not yet the time or place for specifics. “I’m sorry to be the worst interview ever,” she said during lunch at c/o the Maidstone last week, with no need to apologize. Over heirloom tomato salads and a shared bowl of French fries, she did outline some initiatives she means to try and some feedback she has already received from the community.

As she remarked, smiling, at Guild Hall’s Summer Gala party two weeks ago, many people feel strongly about the place and some even more so about replacing the carpet in the museum galleries. (She promised the crowd that she would look into it.) Of more personal concern to her is the flight of youth from the community and the difficulties young artists have in finding both work and living spaces in a real estate market as inflated as the South Fork’s.

She is particularly excited about Guild Hall’s new Artists in Residence program, which is designed to attract young creative people to complete work here and discover the special nature of the place, in the hope that they might choose to remain. And she loves Guild House, where the artists live during their time here. She said the space offers “another setting for public programs, but with an intimate feeling, a living room for dialogues and exchanges,” as well as the residency. She would like to see it used for theatrical presentations as well, or for art installations or other immersive environments.

A program at Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center in which her husband, Carlos Lama, participated, suggested to her another approach to the problem of youth flight. The Walker’s teen council program interviews and hires high school students as paid employees, to participate in workshops and education programs that result in fashion shows, exhibitions, battles of the bands, and other presentations that give teenagers a chance to work within their own areas of interest. The teen council members whom Mr. Lama advised are still in touch with him. One is now an editor at Rolling Stone magazine; another has become prominent in the fashion industry. The program “really solidified where they were going” in their future careers, Ms. Grover said. “People will come back here if they have ties to the community and to its institutions.”

Some of her best work at the Parrish involved getting people out of the museum to enjoy art in other places, some familiar, others unusual. She’s leaving those programs, such as the Parrish Road Show and the Platform series, with her former employer, but she intends to introduce similar projects at Guild Hall, bringing museum patrons out of the galleries to examine art in new and different environments.

PechaKucha, a hugely popular event first devised in Japan that brings residents together several times a year to share their life stories and creative quests through a focused set of slide presentations, will also remain at the Parrish. “I signed the PechaKucha license over to Terrie [Sultan, the Parrish’s director]. Having known and worked with her for more than a decade, it was paramount to me that that relationship be preserved.”

Ms. Grover expects to work collaboratively with Ms. Sultan. “We should embrace our differences but find out where there are similarities and band together,” she said. She pointed to a 2008 Robert Rauschenberg retrospective in Houston where three institutions shared and buses took viewers from venue to venue, as something that could occur here under the right circumstances.

As to her new employers, she said the experience of interviewing and getting to know Guild Hall and its board of directors had been key in her decision to take the leap. In addition to the high degree of commitment and involvement of the board and its chairman, Marty Cohen, she said Ms. Appelhof had been “absolutely wonderful in welcoming me. She called me within five minutes of the announcement and gave me her cell number and told me to call her anytime.”

In an email this week, Mr. Cohen was effusive in praising Ms. Grover’s talent, experience, and reputation in the East End community.

The new director, who has already done a great deal of information-gathering, said that much of her time in the next few months will be spent on doing still more. “For me, it’s about understanding the global vision, the 360-degree view. How does the theater relate to the exhibition program, and how does the education program relate back to them.”

“I love the name Guild Hall,” she said. “It signifies a gathering space and conversations that happen at a high level. There is the potential there for it to be a think tank,” with a topical series like the Hamptons Institute, but across the institution in its other disciplines as well. 

She made it clear, though, that artists — performing, visual, literary, musical, and otherwise — will continue to lead the way, as they always have.

As the National Park Service celebrates its centennial, Terry Tempest Williams, a conservationist, activist, and writer, asked the question, in an article published in The Los Angeles Times, “Will Our National Parks Survive the Next 100 Years?” 

“Remove our national parks and wildlands from the United States and what remains?” she wrote. “An intolerable and lonely self-constructed world without the wisdom and beauty of a landscape much older and wiser than we are.” She concluded on a hopeful note, quoting Thoreau: “We need the tonic of wildness.”

To commemorate the 100th birthday of the park service, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will present a program of music inspired by nature on Friday, Sept. 9, at 6 p.m. Nell Shaw Cohen, a composer who is the founder and director of the Landscape Music Composers Network, proposed the event to the museum and to Cadillac Moon Ensemble, which will perform the works.

The evening will include world premieres of two pieces composed specially for the occasion: “Refuge,” a narrative suite by Ms. Cohen inspired by three species’ conservation stories, and “Of Wolves and Rivers,” Justin Ralls’s piece that integrates soundscapes made from field recordings with instrumental textures. 

Also on the program are “Hall of the White Giant” for marimba by Stephen Lias, inspired by Carlsbad Caverns National Park, “Vista” for violin and electronics by Alex Shapiro, and “Celestial Seasons” for cello by Stephen Wood. All five composers are members of the Landscape Music Composers Network, which brings together composers who share a passion for increasing awareness of the natural world through music.

Ms. Cohen, who grew up in Sag Harbor and San Francisco, is a composer, librettist, and multimedia artist who writes music for chamber ensembles, orchestras, and voice. Her parents, Burt Cohen, a filmmaker, and Deborah Cohen, a writer, encouraged her creativity and curiosity about the arts at a young age.

“When I was in my early and mid-teens I got really focused on rock music,” she said. “I started creating music as a multi-instrumentalist playing multiple instruments, and I recorded a solo album as a teenager.” 

At that time she was actively researching the opportunities in her field. “I found classical composition was a path that would enable me to go further than I was able to go with my rock music, both creatively and professionally.” She enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston for her undergraduate degree with concert music composition as her primary focus, and went on to earn a master’s degree in music from New York University.

Though only 28 years old, she has not only composed some 45 works since 2006, she has also put together multidisciplinary projects that combine her music, video, photography, and interactive media design, among them “Explore John Muir’s Yosemite” and “The Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe and the New Mexico Landscape.” She also started LandscapeMusic.org, a website that provides a platform for such music by publishing essays by and interviews with composers whose work is inspired by the natural world.

Ms. Cohen began writing music inspired by visual art when she was 20, and, in 2012, “Watercolors,” a piece for wind quintet inspired by the watercolor paintings of the artist Charles Burchfield, was performed as part of the public opening of the Parrish Art Museum’s new building in Water Mill.

“My interest in writing music inspired by the natural landscape really emerged out of my interest in visual art and particularly landscape art,” she said, citing O’Keeffe and Burchfield as two artists who were passionate about the natural world. 

While chamber ensemble music affords more concert opportunities than works for orchestras, Ms. Cohen thrives on variety. “Different musical forms enable me to explore different kinds of ideas and different kinds of scale. I’m currently working on a full-length opera, but I want to continue writing chamber music and orchestra music and doing work with multimedia components. Each allows a fresh way of working at music and musical ideas.”

“Refuge,” the piece she composed for the Parrish concert, is a 16-minute suite, the three movements of which explore conservation stories of three species and the National Park Service’s role in wildlife conservation. The first movement depicts the life cycle of the world’s most endangered sea turtle, the Kemp’s ridley, and its connection to Padre Island National Seashore.

Her interest in the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was piqued by an experience she had several years ago at the Elizabeth A. Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Noyac. While walking there, she and her family encountered a cold-stunned sea turtle stranded on the beach. They alerted the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation and carried the turtle back to the trailhead.

The second and third movements deal with the Mission blue butterfly at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and American bison at Yellowstone National Park. 

While she has come to realize that her aim is the sonic equivalent of what visual artists accomplish with landscape art, she stresses that “music inspired by nature should never be taken as an objective representation of the natural world through sound. The perception that a particular melody played on the flute signifies or captures the experience of sunlight filtering through the leaves of a tree has more to do with the composer and/or the listener than it does with sunlight or trees themselves.”

Ms. Cohen was born in San Francisco but started coming to Sag Harbor as an infant. “During those first 17 years, we spent three or four months a year in Sag Harbor. It was more of a summer thing because during those first years my sister and I were in school in San Francisco. Then, as we were being homeschooled, we were a little more flexible about the scheduling.” She feels that a bicoastal upbringing and the unstructured, self-directed setting of homeschooling gave her the freedom to discover her own path.

Ms. Cohen works on different projects simultaneously. “My composing setup is very portable,” she said. “I have a tiny midi-keyboard and my laptop. I work primarily in my Brooklyn apartment, but I can compose pretty much anywhere as long as I have a desk and a power outlet.”

Cadillac Moon Ensemble, which is based in New York City, has an atypical instrumentation for a quartet. It consists of Karen Kim on violin, Roberta Michel on flute, Aminda Asher on cello, and Sean Statser on percussion. “Their unique sound results from just having flute and no other winds and adding percussion in the context where there isn’t a piano or other melodic instrument,” said Ms. Cohen. The group is also unusual in that all of the works they perform are composed specifically for them by living composers with whom they have personal relationships.

In addition to Ms. Cohen, three of the composers featured on the program will travel to Water Mill from Oregon, Texas, and Georgia in order to introduce their work and interact with the audience. Tickets for the program are $20, $10 for members.

The Joseph Vecsey All Star Comedy Show will return to the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor tomorrow at 8 p.m. with three up-and-coming New York comedians.

Neko White has been a professional stand-up comic since the age of 14 and has brought his mix of social commentary and personal analysis to all the stops on New York City’s comedy circuit. Kenny Garcia, too, has a serious work ethic, having been onstage for the past six years at comedy clubs in New York and up and down the East Coast.

Comedians such as Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock inspired Chris Clarke, who has appeared on BET’s “106th Park,” at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival, and in independent films, sketches, and comedy clubs throughout the Northeast. Andy Fiori, a nationally touring comedian and producer and on-air talent for SiriusXM Satellite Radio, will host the program. Tickets are $30.

The Complete Unknowns, a Bob Dylan tribute band, will cover Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Tour years of the mid-1970s in a concert at Bay Street on Saturday at 8 p.m. The band will play songs from “Blood on the Tracks,” “Desire,” and “Planet Waves,” and will rework other material performed during those legendary tours, which also included Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Tickets are $25 and $30.

Bay Street has also announced a patron trip to Cuba for Feb. 3 through Feb. 10. Created especially for Bay Street Theater patrons, the tour will be led by Scott Schwartz, the venue’s artistic director, and Tracy Mitchell, its executive director. Complete information is available at baystreet.org/page/cuba-2017.

The Madoo Conservancy in Saga­ponack has invited the public to picnic on its winter house lawn while watching “Much Ado About Nothing” on Sunday at 4 p.m. Shakespeare’s play will be performed by Britain’s Castle Theatre Company, which for three decades has brought high-quality productions of the Bard’s work to historical houses, gardens, and museums throughout the U.K.

Five years ago the company expanded its reach to the United States, where it has performed sellout tours of “Twelfth Night” and “As You Like It.” Tickets are $40, $30 for members. In the event Sunday’s program sells out, another will be performed Monday afternoon at 4. 

Attention Trekkies! “Beam Me Up: Fifty Years of ‘Star Trek,’ ” Clive Young’s multimedia program that covers the history of the show, will come to the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. A writer and lecturer whose beat is the crossroads between high tech and popular culture, Mr. Young will begin with Gene Roddenberry’s original conception of the show and follow its development and its continuing impact on pop culture around the world.

Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center will open its 2016-17 season with “Darren Ottati: An Evening of Broadway Ballads,” with shows Sunday and Monday at 7 p.m.

Mr. Ottati, whose performance of “Some Enchanted Evening” was one of the highlights of the Center Stage production of “South Pacific” in March, will be joined by several friends and fellow singers and the orchestra from “South Pacific” for an evening of Broadway ballads and showstoppers.

Light refreshments will follow each of the performances. Tickets are $35; the proceeds will benefit Center Stage.

Alvaro Restrepo, a renowned Colombian choreographer and dancer now in residence at the Watermill Center, will hold a free open rehearsal on Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center on Job’s Lane. Along with members of El Colegio del Cuerpo, the company he founded, Mr. Restrepo will rehearse “Negra! Anger!” It uses the music of Nina Simone and texts by Aimé Césaire, a poet from Martinique, and Victoria Santa Cruz, an African-Peruvian composer and choreographer.

Women Artists on Film

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs will present “Women Artists as Victims,” a series of four films organized by the film historian and art critic Marion Wolberg Weiss, starting tomorrow at 7 p.m. with “Frida,” Julie Taymor’s film about the turbulent relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina star.

Other films in the series, which highlights women in the arts who faced adversity and emotional and physical suffering, are “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus,” with Nicole Kidman as the influential and provocative photographer (Friday, Sept. 16); “Big Eyes,” Tim Burton’s film about the painter Margaret Keane, whose husband, Walter, took credit for her popular paintings of big-eyed waifs (Sept. 23), and “Camille Claudel,” in which Isabel Adjani plays the would-be sculptor who became the assistant and lover of Auguste Rodin, played by Gerard Depardieu (Sept. 30).

All screenings are at 7 p.m. and are free; reservations are not required. Ms. Weiss will introduce each film and lead a discussion afterward.

From Cuba to Gansett

“Cuban Arts,” a group exhibition organized by Pamela Ruiz, will open at Ille Arts in Amagansett with a reception Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. and continue through Sept. 27.

Ms. Ruiz first visited Cuba 20 years ago, when she met Damian Aquiles, a Cuban artist who is now her husband, and since then has traveled back and forth between the two countries. She met Sara DeLuca, the gallery’s owner, several years ago, and the exhibition is a result of their decision to do a project together.

The show includes photographs by Liudmila & Nelson, a team, and Jennifer Jimenez Rico, and a wall installation and several pieces of sculpture by Mr. Aquiles. Ms. Ruiz has also brought objects from Cuba to display in the gallery.

Charles Ly at Guild Hall

“Charles Ly: Humans and Hides” will open tomorrow in Guild Hall’s education corridor and remain on view through Nov. 5. A reception will take place next Thursday from 6 to 7 p.m.

Mr. Ly, who grew up in East Hampton and studied at the Laguna College of Art and Design, has spoken of his admiration for Jan van Eyck, Odd Nerdrum, Andrew Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and other “masters of illustrating a narrative.” His work combines the centuries-old tradition of design patterns based on natural forms with imaginative, fantastic compositions created with a meticulous drawing and painting technique.

Mr. Ly divides his time between Brooklyn and East Hampton, where he is likely to be found when the surf is up.

Art Talks in Amagansett

Art/History/Amagansett, a series of Saturday conversations and Sunday seminars about art and artists, will kick off at the Amagansett Library this weekend with programs about the LongHouse Reserve and artists’ rights.

“The House That Jack Built: LongHouse Reserve” will focus on Jack Lenor Larsen’s East Hampton utopia for creative living in a discussion with Matko Tomicic, its executive director, and Dianne Benson, its president, on Saturday at 6 p.m. Joan Baum will moderate.

Carol Steinberg, an attorney specializing in issues relevant to art and artists, will lead a seminar on “Copyright and Collaboration 101.5,” in which she will cover 10 things artists should know about those issues. The seminar will be held Sunday at 6 p.m.

Subsequent programs will take place weekly through Oct. 1. Admission is free, but reservations are necessary and can be made by calling 631-267-3810.

Handmade Furniture

At Ashawagh

“The Second Annual Handmade Furniture Show” will open at Ashawagh Hall in Springs today and continue through Tuesday. A reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

The exhibition includes pieces by James DeMartis, Max Philip Dobler, Nick and Nancy Groudas, Marcie Honerkamp, Gary Schatmeyer, Silas Seandel, and Nico Yektai, and photographs by Carolyn Conrad. The gallery will be open from noon to 5 p.m., except for Saturday, when the hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Group Show for Project Most

Project Most Gallery in East Hampton will open “Community,” a group exhibition organized by Julie Keyes and Pamela Willoughby, with a reception on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will run through Sept. 29.

Participating artists are Nathan Slate Joseph, Anne Elisabeth Kiaer, Evan Lagasse, Hush, Martine Langatta, and Nicole Nadeau. A portion of proceeds from sales will be donated to Project Most, which runs after-school programs for students at the Springs School and the John M. Marshall Elementary School.

Toni Ross in Chelsea

“The Presence of Absence,” an exhibition of sculpture by Toni Ross, will open today at Ricco Maresca in Chelsea with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. It will remain on view through Oct. 15.

The exhibition includes steles, cubes, and strata, all made of unglazed stoneware, slip, and, in some cases, hemp or cotton thread. The new pieces address exteriors, especially the materiality of clay, and frontality. The steles are vertical, while many of the cubes are tilted, seeming jammed into the surfaces on which they sit as if they have crashed there.

According to Ms. Ross, “My art seeks symmetry between the temporal and the timeless. Moving from inwardness to architectural facades, pivoting cubes and sculptural collage, my recent work is fixed in action and contemplation.”

Typology by Schmidt

Bastienne Schmidt, a mixed-media artist from Bridgehampton, will talk about and sign copies of her new book, “Typology of Women,” on Saturday at 5 p.m. at BookHampton in East Hampton. The book consists of a series of hand-painted orange cutouts of different types of women as they have been represented in different historical periods in both popular culture and literature. 

Ms. Schmidt’s installation “Archaeology of Time” was recently on view at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum as part of the Parrish Road Show.

Surface Library Returns

Surface Library, which operated in Springs from 2006 to 2011, will return to the hamlet for “D-Tour,” a Labor Day weekend exhibition to be held at Ashawagh Hall from Saturday through Monday. A reception is set for Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., with music by Job Potter and Friends.

Organized by Bob Bachler and James Kennedy, the founders of Surface Library, the show will include work by Fulvio Massi, Maeve D’Arcy, John Haubrich, Ted Tyler, Joe Eschenberg, Barbara Groot, Mr. Bachler, and Mr. Kennedy. According to Mr. Bachler, the title implies that the exhibiting artists have deviated from their usual stylistic pathways for the exhibition.

The exhibition will be open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday from noon to 6, and Monday from noon until 8.

Gregory Johnston at Borghi

“Ultimate History,” a show of work by Gregory Johnston, will open at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Bridgehampton with a reception Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. It will continue through Sept. 24.

The exhibition consists of wall sculptures created from the parts of vintage racing automobiles. Mr. Johnston, who has 20 years of experience restoring vintage cars, transforms the parts into sculptural works that refer to the history and culture of racetracks.

Christopher French Solo

“An Alphabet of Sites,” an exhibition of new paintings by Christopher French, will open tomorrow at the Drawing Room in East Hampton and remain on view through Oct. 3.

For more than three decades, Mr. French has created Minimalist abstractions, often in series in which repetition of pattern was offset by brilliant variations in color. In his new work, symmetry has given way to pointed shafts of refracted color that surge across the canvas from distinct vortices like beams of colored light. 

According to the gallery, “Layering pigment in thin veils, French moves from tone to color as the animated surface gradually transforms color and form into light and space.” Mr. French, who lives in North Sea, has exhibited widely and is represented in numerous public collections.

Barbara Groot at Kramoris

Abstract paintings by Barbara Groot are on view at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor from today through Sept. 22. A reception will be held Saturday afternoon from 4 to 5:30.

Ms. Groot’s paintings draw energy from the sun and light of the East End, according to the artist, who grew up in Southern California. Active, bold brushwork, the layered use of color, and long, sweeping lines characterize her canvases.

Watercolors at Bridge Gardens

An exhibition of watercolors by Lois Bender is on view at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton through Oct. 2. “Flowers at Bridge Gardens” celebrates the abundance and variety of floral growth there. Ms. Bender, who has been painting and teaching watercolor at the site for four years, will be there on Saturdays. Fifteen percent of sales will be donated to the Peconic Land Trust, which owns and manages Bridge Gardens.

In addition, Ms. Bender will teach watercolor classes at the garden on Saturdays from Sept. 10 through Dec. 10, from noon to 3 p.m.

Joan Semmel in Chelsea

Alexander Gray Associates in Chelsea will open “Joan Semmel: New Work” next Thursday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will continue through Oct. 15.

The recent paintings and drawings by Ms. Semmel, who has a house in Springs, continue the representation of her own likeness as a site to consider the aging female body as an active, potent vessel for life and art. In the new work she applies saturated abstract colors in a variety of styles, sometimes in linear strokes, others in flat swaths of pigment. Her work continues to transcend traditional notions of scale and color.

Southampton Artists Show

The Southampton Artists Association’s annual Labor Day show is on view through Sept. 11 at the Southampton Cultural Center. A reception will take place Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

The exhibition includes photography, paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Gallery hours are Sunday through Thursday, noon to 4 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, noon to 6.

New Parrish Curator

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill has appointed Corinne Erni as curator of special projects effective today. Ms. Erni comes to the Parrish from the New Museum in Manhattan, where she was senior producer of “Ideas City,” a collaborative arts initiative and internationally recognized biennial focusing on art and culture as essential to the future vitality of cities.

She also co-founded “Artport,” a global curatorial platform that commissioned, curated, and produced public art projects, exhibitions, artist residencies, educational programs, and publications, with a focus on art and climate change.

Born in Switzerland, Ms. Erni was educated in Milan and New York. She began her career in fashion design in Switzerland and New York before turning her attention to interdisciplinary arts programming. 

Four at White Room

“Through Time and Space,” an exhibition of work by four artists, is on view at the White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton through Sept. 18. A reception will take place Sunday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ellyn Tucker is showing collages created from fragments found in old books, letters, papers, fabrics, and photographs. Robert Tucker, a veteran of the film and graphic arts fields, creates detailed monoprints on handmade rice paper.

Joe Currie, who grew up in England, will show paintings that explore a split-second look into an object in motion, emphasizing speed and light. Gabriele Vigorelli’s canvases feature vibrant colors, abstracted figures, and complex geometric arrangements.

As the Hamptons International Film Festival has grown, so has its commitment, through its signature programs, to films that engage a range of social and political issues. This year’s festival, which will take place Oct. 6 through Oct. 10, will include the 17th iteration of Films of Conflict and Resolution, the second Compassion, Justice, and Animal Rights program, and a new signature program, Air, Land, and Sea.

Films of Conflict and Resolution, dedicated to work dealing with the effects of war and violence, will include the East Coast premiere of “Disturbing the Peace,” an American documentary that follows a group of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters who join to form “Combatants for Peace” in search of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Another film in that program, “Sonita,” is the story of a young Afghan refugee living in Iran and dreaming of becoming a famous rapper. To her family, however, she is worth $9,000 as a bride. The German-Iranian-Swiss production chronicles Sonita’s defiance of local expectations and the condemnation of a violent and oppressive society.

Two films concerned with animal rights issues are “The Ivory Game” and “Unlocking the Cage.” The former illuminates the dire fate of the African elephant and the efforts to stop the systematic slaughter driving it to extinction. The film was shot in Africa and Asia with the help of conservationists, intelligence organizations, frontline rangers, and undercover activists working to expose the corruption of the illegal ivory trade.

“Unlocking the Cage,” the most recent film from the Sag Harbor team of Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, follows Steven Wise, an animal rights lawyer, as he attempts to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans by seeking to transform a chimpanzee from a “thing” with no rights to a “person” with legal protections.

The Air, Land, and Sea program will debut with “Sonic Sea,” a documentary about whales and other marine life that are guided toward food, mates, and safety by underwater sounds, and the impact on their frail sonic environment of industrial and military ocean noise. Additional films in the signature programs will be announced in the coming weeks.

The festival will collaborate with Variety for the fifth year to present the 10 Actors to Watch program. This year’s selections will be celebrated in the Oct. 4 issue of the venerable entertainment trade magazine in conjunction with coverage of the festival. 

They are Riz Ahmed, Mahershala Ali, Rachel Brosnahan, Ana de Armas, Alden Erhenreich, Lucas Hedges, Aja Naomi King, Tavi Gevinson, Kara Hayward, and John Legend. Previous nominees include Oscar winners and nominees such as Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson, Brie Larson, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael Shannon, and Melissa Leo.