For Anne Chaisson and David Nugent, the executive director and artistic director, respectively, of the Hamptons International Film Festival, this year’s program of more than 140 films seemed to have a common theme — they were thought-provoking and encouraged hard questions.

“It felt to me that the theme of this festival was more about our right as U.S. citizens and as human beings to ask questions . . . and to do everything we can to discover the truth,” Ms. Chaisson said at the start of the festival’s awards presentations on Monday.

“Rams,” directed by Grimur Hakonarson, was the winner of the best narrative feature award. The film depicted a pair of brothers in a farming family in Iceland who haven’t spoken to each other in 40 years but must come together when a deadly virus threatens the family’s prizewinning herd of sheep. The film is expected to be released in the United States soon. “Embrace the Serpent,” directed by Ciro Guerra of Colombia, received an honorable mention in the narrative feature film category.

The narrative short film award went to Jorn Threlfall, director of “Over,” described as “a crime scene told in reverse.” The short film “Patriot” by Eva Riley was highlighted with an honorable mention in the narrative short film category.

An intense lineup of documentary films, including “The Uncondemned,” about the push for the treatment of rape as a war crime following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and Darcy Dennet’s “The Champions,” about the fate of the pit bull terriers involved in the Michael Vick dog-fighting operation, yielded several winners.

“The Uncondemned,” directed by Michele Mitchell and the late Nick Louvel, received the the Victor Rabinowitz and Joanne Grant Award for Social Justice and the Brizzolara Family Foundation Award for a Film of Conflict and Resolution. The award was accepted by a tearful Ms. Mitchell, whose co-director, Mr. Louvel, died in a car accident here about three weeks ago.

“The Champions” received the Zelda Penzel Giving Voice to the Voiceless Award, which is “dedicated to those who suffer in silence.”

For the best documentary feature award, the winner was “Missing People,” directed by David Shapiro, about a prominent New York City art gallery director’s investigation into her young brother’s unsolved murder. The documentary “Chuck Norris vs. Communism,” directed by Ilinca Calugareanu, took home an honorable mention for best documentary feature. The best documentary short film award was given to “Last Day of Freedom,” directed by Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman.

Other awards honored films with local connections or produced by up-andcoming female filmmakers. “When I Live My Life Over Again,” directed by Robert Edwards, which was largely shot on Long Island, received the Suffolk County Film Commission Next Exposure Grant. The film depicted the daughter of “a famed romantic crooner,” played by Christopher Walken, who heads to the Hamptons in the wintertime to reflect on her vices, victories, and reinvention. The Tangerine Entertainment Juice Fund Award, recognizing outstanding work by a female filmmaker, went to “Suffragette,” directed by Sarah Gavron, which was inspired by the true story of activists who risked everything they had in pushing for women’s right to vote.

Furniture and Photographs

Ille Arts in Amagansett will show furniture by Andy Ring and photographs by Bart Julius Peters and Julius Shulman from tomorrow through Nov. 1. A reception will take place Oct. 24 from 5 to 7 p.m.

Formerly a software engineer, Mr. Ring made the switch to construction in 2002 and, within several years, began to concentrate on custom furniture for architects and fabrication projects for artists. He divides his time between Montauk and Brooklyn, where he has a shop in the Navy Yard.

Mr. Shulman, who died in 2009, was a noted architectural photographer who specialized in Modernist buildings, many of them California houses by such architects as Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Oscar Niemeyer. He was one of the first to stage his photographs as tableaus including people in their homes.

Mr. Peters’s coarse-grained blackand-white photographs appear much older than they are, creating a sense of nostalgia, romance, and timelessness.

Flo Lunn is the curator of the photography show.

Three at Ashawagh

Ashawagh Hall in Springs will show work by Annie Sessler, John Todaro, and Sarah Jaffe Turnbull on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 10 to 5, with a reception set for Saturday from 5 to 8.

Ms. Sessler, who lives in Montauk, is known for her monoprints, which have been inspired by Japanese gyotaku, or fish printing. She uses water-soluble, non-toxic inks and freshly caught fish to make handmade relief prints on recycled, vintage, and new natural and synthetic fabrics.

A full-time photographer since 1987, Mr. Todaro, who lives in East Hampton, has been published, collected, and exhibited widely. The Ashawagh show will include new work in both black and white and color, along with a series of recent botanical abstractions.

Ms. Jaffe has been making ceramic sculpture in recent years, beginning with a series of heads and moving into abstract architectonic structural pieces. The exhibition will include a group of wall plaques that imagine the surface of dwarf planets. She lives in Bridgehampton.

Watermill’s Open Rehearsal

The Watermill Center will present an open rehearsal of Amy Khoshbin’s “The Myth of Layla,” a work in progress that incorporates performance and video, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

An artist-in-residence at the center this month, Ms. Khoshbin uses her personal history as an Iranian-American activist in the work, which is set in a near future when the United States is at war with Iran. She performs as Layla, the protagonist, whose relationships and beliefs are put to the test as her fame increases and she is cast in a new reality show.

The show is co-directed by Liz McAuliffe, a dance and performance artist. Both Ms. Khoshbin and Ms. McAuliffe have performed extensive-ly at museums, festivals, and arts centers, among them the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New Museum, and Judson Church. The program is free, but advance reservations, which can be made at the center’s website, are required.

New at Tulla Booth

“Fall Treasures,” a show of new and classic photographs, is on view through Nov. 23 at the Tulla Booth Gallery in Sag Harbor. A reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. Theparticipating photographers are Daniel Jones, Roberto Dutesco, Stephen Wilkes, and Eric Meola.

Guild Hall’s JDTLab will have a free staged reading of “Ashes and Ink,” a play by Martha Pichey, a writer and editor, tomorrow at 8 p.m. The play focuses on the complicated relationship between Molly and her son, Quinn, who descends into addiction after the sudden death of his father. Topaz Adizes, an Emmy Award-winner, will direct.

The Met: Live in HD will show Verdi’s “Otello,” a new production directed by Bartlett Sher, on Saturday at 1 p.m. The cast is led by Aleksandrs Antonenko, who plays the doomed Moor, Sonya Yoncheva as Desdemona, Otello’s wife and victim, and Zeljko Lucic as Iago, the mastermind of Otello’s demise. Tickets are $22, $20 for members, and $15 for students.

Sunday’s Table Talk will feature a Broadway sing-along with David Lewis from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Mr. Lewis, a musical director, arranger, and performer in New York City, will play and sing selections from the Great American Songbook. Lyrics will be provided so audience members can join him. The free program will also include stories from Mr. Lewis’s forthcoming book, “Confessions of a New York Pianist.”

The Artists Alliance of East Hampton’s 2015 studio tour will provide an opportunity to experience the variety of work being created on the East End and to engage in illuminating conversations with the artists, 16 of whom will open their workspaces on Oct. 10 and Oct. 11 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

Recent visits to three of the participants offered a sense of what visitors can expect to see.

Sheila Rotner’s house and studio are a stone’s throw from Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, and halfway around the world from India, where she was born. Raised in Argentina and educated in the United Kingdom, Ms. Rotner practiced architecture in England until moving to Washington, D.C., in 1973.

“When I came here, I couldn’t call myself an architect without going through five more years of study. I worked for a while as a designer, but I got more and more into painting and expressing my interest in geometry visually.” She and her husband moved to Sag Harbor in 2007, and “luckily we found this house, which already had a studio.”

While her two dogs capered on the patio outside, Ms. Rotner pointed out a variety of pieces linked by her interest in geometry and its expression through a variety of materials. On one wall is a series of works in which strips of old paintings are woven through squares of wire mesh, then painted over. She has also begun to weave strips of paper into canvas.

Two pieces of aluminum, each bent on a diagonal axis, sat on the floor. “The pieces aren’t welded,” she said. “The aluminum is cut and bent. The idea is so simple, really. I start off with a root rectangle,” a not-so-simple geometric form. Four paper-hanging sculptures, each torn in spots and threaded through with cable, were displayed on a table. One is made of tar paper, the others from 300-pound paper.

“I’m thinking of working with aluminum or copper, since they won’t tear, but I’m amazed at how strong these are. The tar paper is acid-free and takes color beautifully,” said the artist. She paints the pieces with a blend of acrylic and mica dust. “I mix them myself, with different grades of mica dust depending on the degree of luminosity I want. I try to get luminosity rather than brightness.”

One artist she discovered after moving here is Dorothea Rockburne, whose Parrish Art Museum retrospective she saw in 2011. “She is obviously working with a different kind of geometry, but I was just getting into cutting and folding when I saw that show, and I was excited because it sort of gave me permission to do what I was doing.” Another material she has worked with is glass. “I’m very interested in transparency, shadow, and light.”

Another architect-painter is Peter Gumpel,whose Old Stone Highway studio in Springs is reached by an exterior circular staircase. While he is no longer practicing, the last project of his eponymous firm was the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. His long career in architecture was paralleled by one as a painter.

“I’ve painted all my life,” he said. He went to the High School of Music and Art, then to Pratt, before attending the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. “When I was a senior at Music and Art I chickened out and said, ‘I’m not sure I’m a good enough painter to support myself.’ So I became an architect. But the entire time I practiced, I painted and sketched and drew.”

While he went through a number of phases, including abstraction and oil painting, he eventually settled on watercolor as his medium. “I like the challenge of it. You really only get one chance, because you can’t paint over it.” Many of the works in his studio are landscapes. “Even though my work is realistic, rather than just making a replica of what I’m seeing, I try to capture the spirit of it.”

While he sometimes works en plein air and is a member of the Wednesday Group of painters who work with the landscape, he has concluded that “I’m not really a good plein air painter. I paint slowly, and watercolors are, as I said, very unforgiving. When I paint outdoors, I have to paint faster, because the light or the character of the scene is changing, and it doesn’t work for me.” He primarily works from photographs, which he sometimes takes while out with the Wednesday group. “If I don’t take my sketch book, I’ll take my camera.”

Set back from a quiet street and surrounded by tall pines, Bernice Faegenburg’s house in the Northwest Woods, where she has spent weekends for 25 years, is an unlikely-looking studio.

Her large paintings will be hung or propped up against walls and furniture throughout its living spaces for the tour.

Ms. Faegenburg majored in fine art at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and English at the university’s main campus, then earned an M.A. in art ed- ucation at Pace. Her education has continued throughout her career. “I’m interested in processes,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to try new things, and I’m still learning.”

She has been studying Japanese brush painting for years, “though it takes 20 years to become a master at it.” On a wall in her kitchen hangs an etching made using the chine collé process, which involves the passing of papers and glue through the press at the same time. “It’s tricky to do. I’ve done it the right way, and I’ve done it and made mistakes.”

While she has a basement studio, much of her work has been created out- side, including “Exploding Spring Evening,” a large painting hanging in her kitchen. “I laid the canvas on a big sheet of plastic in my backyard, then laid a sheet of wire fencing over that, took a big squeegee, and painted over the grid.”

Many of her paintings are triptychs whose components can be combined in different ways or hung as separate works. A typical piece will include acrylic paint, silkscreened images — she used to teach silkscreen printing — photographs, and strokes used in Japan- ese brush painting. Her work mixes fig- urative components, such as flowers or birch trees or constellations in a night sky, with abstract elements. Large images are offset by smaller, contrasting ones, to create canvases that are almost collage-like in their complexity. Ms. Faegenburg’s work has been shown at the Florence Biennale, in Tokyo, Athens, Mumbai, and throughout the United States.

Complete tour information can be found at aaeh.org.

Arlene Reckson could not have known, when she accepted a position at Record Plant Studios in Manhattan’s Times Square, that John Lennon would soon invite her into the control room for the first-ever listen of his just-completed “Imagine” album. Or that she would later work for Lennon and Yoko Ono, or join Lennon in Los Angeles during his so-called “Lost Weekend,” or tell a young assistant engineer at the Power Station studios named John Bongiovi that he would one day be a star.

But that is how things played out for the New York native, who lives in Amagansett and Manhattan. “It was a time that everybody wanted to be in a band,” she remembered. “Of course, the only talent I had was to be behind the scenes. I decided, ‘I heard about this thing called a recording studio; that’s where everybody hangs out.’ ”

An agency sent the former shoe designer to two potential employers, both of which offered a position: the William Morris Agency, the renowned entertainment talent firm, and Record Plant, which had opened in 1968. “The trajectory of my career was decided that day,” she said.

Ms. Reckson worked for Roy Cicala, a producer and the studio’s chief engineer, initially as a night receptionist, and later booking manager and studio manager. “I thought that I had the best job in the world,” she said. Record companies, for which she later worked, offered a better title and higher salary, “but it just wasn’t as fun, because it was corporate. In those days rent was cheap, you didn’t worry about that so much. There was nothing better than working in a recording studio.”

One day, Mr. Cicala, who died last year, asked her to come to work on a Sunday. “I said sure,” she recalled. “I didn’t ask who or why. It was the kind of job where even if you weren’t working, everybody hung out, everybody was there the whole time.”

The session was for orchestral overdubs for “Imagine,” and soon she met Lennon and Ms. Ono. During the sessions, she said, “I was reading an Edgar Cayce book on Atlantis, and John had to go to the bathroom, and said, ‘Can I borrow what you’re reading?’ I said sure, and he took the book in there, and came out and asked if he could have it.”

Soon, she was doing errands for the couple, shopping for clothes or fetching a guitar from the hotel where they lived for a time after arriving, in 1971, from England. Ms. Reckson’s contributions to the couple’s art was acknowledged on both the inner sleeve of the “Imagine” album, where she is pictured and credited for “this and that,” and on their 1971 single “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” the cover of which also pictures her.

Lennon and Ms. Ono wanted a choir on the song, so Ms. Reckson went to Harlem, found a children’s choir, prepared a release form for their parents, hired a bus, bought lunch, and arranged a donation to the church. After the session, Lennon turned to Al Steckler, director in the United States of the Beatles’ label, Apple Records, and said, “Great job!”

“Al said, ‘Yeah, thank you,’ ” Ms. Reckson remembered, to which Mr. Cicala said, “ ‘He didn’t get them, Arlene got them!’ That’s why I’m in the picture on the cover.”

Through Lennon and Ms. Ono, Ms. Reckson met May Pang, an assistant to the couple and later Lennon’s companion during their separation. “We became quick friends,” she said. “Between the two of us, I don’t think there was a concert or a backstage pass we didn’t get, because if she didn’t know some- body, I knew them, and if I didn’t know somebody, she knew them. We had a lot of fun.”

Ms. Reckson left Record Plant in 1973 and moved to Woodstock, N.Y., but soon got a call from Ms. Pang, asking that she join her and Lennon in Los Angeles. “I had no idea about the affair,” she said. “I kind of figured it out the next morning.” In California, “I was teaching May to drive,” she said. “He didn’t want to have the limousine. I was a terrible driver — now I think, ‘Oh my God, I had his life in my hands!’ ”

Back in New York, she worked as a personal assistant to Ms. Ono. “I think many times, it was just company they wanted,” she said. “Somehow, you get into an accepted inner sanctum. And everybody’s always looking for me to say something mean about her, but she was always extremely kind to me, and very generous.”

Several years later, working at the Power Station, Mr. Bongiovi, now known as Jon Bon Jovi, “would sit and have lunch with me at my desk and want to hear my Record Plant stories,” Ms. Reckson said. “He wanted to know anything anybody could tell him about John Lennon. I would tell him different stories. I remember telling him, ‘You have it. Whatever it is, you’ve got it.’ ” Ms. Reckson was also the first female A&R (artists and repertoire) director at the U.S. affiliate of British label Pye Records, where she had a huge hit with “Kung Fu Fighting.” She also produced the “Pye History Of British Pop Music” compilation series.

Her stories could fill a book. On a recent afternoon at the Corcoran Group’s Amagansett office, where she works, Ms. Reckson recalled experiences with many classic rock ’n’ roll bands including the Who and T. Rex. In 1973, the rock journalist Ben Fong Torres, then of Rolling Stone magazine, came to Record Plant to interview a new band called the New York Dolls. “He saw me, knew I’d been sitting there for three years, and said, ‘What do you think of them?’ And I said, ‘Kind of like punk rock.’ Ben said, ‘Can I use that?’ I meant it like the ’50s kind of word — the punks that hung around on the street corner. Here was a guy” — David Johansen, the Dolls’ singer — “who had no record deal, and he came in with the swagger of a Mick Jagger.”

In the summer of 1993, Ms. Reckson remained on the South Fork beyond Labor Day due to the New York City schools’ delayed opening after the discovery of asbestos. “We would always come out for the summer,” she said, “and I had worked in real estate a little bit in New York. But in New York you have to work on weekends and at night. So I did the reverse commute, and it was a lot easier to come out here, have my daughter ride horses, not work nights, and basically work weekends and a couple days here and there.” She commutes back and forth for about half the year.

Ms. Reckson remains close with Ms. Pang, and through her became close with Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, who died in April. She is, perhaps, the only person to have enjoyed a warm relationship with the three most significant women in Lennon’s adult life.

The decision to accept a position at Record Plant did indeed decide the tr jectory of her career. “It was fun,” she said. “We used to think of it as a sitcom. We were a weekly sitcom, and these people who came to record were just the guest star of the week.”

“And then” she added dryly, “I sell real estate.”

Center Stage at Southampton Cultural Center will hold open auditions for Joe Landry’s “It’s a Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play” on Sunday and Monday at 6 p.m. at the center’s Levitas Center for the Arts. Auditions will begin promptly, and late arrivals will be seen at the discretion of the director, Michael Disher. Readings will be from the script.

Mr. Landry’s adaptation of the classic holiday story is written and produced as a live radio show, relying on the script, sound effects, period costumes, and the vocal prowess of the actors. The cast size is variable, different ages are needed, the production is non-union, and actors will not be paid. Multiple performances will take place Nov. 20 through Nov. 22 and Nov. 27 and Nov. 29.

Laura Benanti, a Tony Award-winning actress and vocalist, will appear live in concert at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday at 8 p.m. Ms. Benanti has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Lincoln Center’s American Songbook, Wolf Trap, and Boston’s Symphony Hall, among others, and in May opened the National Memorial Day Concert broadcast live on PBS to more than 10 million viewers.

She has appeared on the television series “Nashville,” “The Good Wife,” “Law and Order: SVU,” and “Nurse Jackie,” among others. Her stage credits include “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “The Wedding Singer,” “Nine,” “Into the Woods,” and “Gypsy,” for which she won a Tony Award as Outstanding Featured Actress.

Tickets range from $55 to $75 and can be purchased through the theater’s website.

Although the people who were prep school age at the time of the Choate Rosemary Hall cocaine scandal are now pushing 50, the story, about a scholarship kid trying to fit in with a fast-moving elite crowd by selling drugs to them, has a timeless quality.

The year was 1984, and a total of 14 students were expelled in the wake of an arrest of one of the students at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was attempting to bring $300,000 worth of the drug into the country from Venezuela.

Joseph Castelo, who has a house in Montauk just down the road from Duryea’s, is trying to capture that story and that moment in his new fictional film, “The Preppie Connection,” in which Dylan Blue, a recent grad of Southampton High School, is featured.

It will be screened as part of the Hamptons International Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday in East Hampton.

“It is a very personal film for me,” Mr. Castelo said. “I went to boarding school in the early ’80s, and when I arrived it was a culture shock and a real challenge for me in how to assimilate and navigate in that environment.”

He said filming the movie brought him back to that time. “I didn’t start a coke ring, but I understand the urge to fit in and create an identity for yourself.”

It was important for him to keep the flavor of the time and still make it feel modern. He said he scored the film with music from the early 1980s but used contemporary covers. He wasn’t trying to recreate an era in the universal sense. “I wanted the film to look and feel like a memory.”

This is not Mr. Castelo’s first outing at the festival. “American Saint,” a 2001 film, won a Golden Starfish award that year. He has had a house in Montauk for many years, heading there for weekends and summers with his wife and two daughters.

Mr. Blue, who is taking time off from college to give acting his full attention, said he hasn’t yet seen a final cut of the film but saw a trailer that impressed him. “It reminds me a lot of the Hamptons social structure, the differences between public school and the Ross School.”

His character is part of the lead character’s former life. “He gets into Choate on a full scholarship, struggles to fit in with the students, and comes to me, his best friend from public school, to sell them drugs.”

Mr. Castelo said he admired Mr. Blue’s performance in the film and complimented his range. One of the youngest cast members, he was playing very close to his age. “He was completely committed to the film and the production. . . . He brought an interesting tone to the character with Dennis. He saw he could be a comedic foil to Toby, then he becomes a more serious character as the film goes on. It’s a testament to range.”

The shoot took two months. Mr. Blue said he was happy to be in a role that showed a more serious side, as his prior roles had been primarily comedic. The other cast members, mostly in their 20s, are older and spend most of their time in Los Angeles. “They are all good enough to become household names, especially Logan [Huffman] and Tom [Mann],” he said.

While he was mature enough to hang out with them, there was “a bit of a disconnect” because of the age difference. “We lived in a Staten Island house the producers put us up in while filming. Tom and I talked a lot then, about his plans and what acting means to him. I’m sure we will see each other again.”

When The Star last spoke with him, Mr. Blue was about to play a supporting role in a Comedy Central series, “Big Lake,” which lasted for only one season. He now lives in Brooklyn and has just signed up for classes at the Barrow Group in Manhattan. “You have to bring in your own material and decide what you want to work on. It’s the first time that has even been posed to me.”

Screening times for “The Preppie Connection” are 5:15 p.m. on Saturday and 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, both at the East Hampton Cinema.

Two at Halsey Mckay

Halsey Mckay Gallery in in East Hampton is presenting concurrent solo exhibitions of work by Takeshi Murata and Ian Cooper through Nov. 15.

Mr. Murata’s works were drawn with a pen and tablet in Photoshop, then silkscreened with multiple passes. The drawings represent the environment around the artist’s upstate studio, early 19th-century industrial architecture, 20th-century hand-built houses, and iPhone and laptop screens. The amalgamation of technology and nature is the subject of his work.

“Off/Off” includes five mixed-media sculptures by Mr. Cooper that engage themes of self-reflexivity, mirroring, retraction, and disembodiment by means of material translation and implied use potential. Among the materials he uses are wall-hung, waxed canvas panels, medium-density fiberboard and plywood, quilted fabric elements, and a penetrated matador’s cape.

Artists Studio Tour

Sixteen artists from East Hampton to East Quogue will open their studios Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the Artists Alliance of East Hampton’s 28th annual studio tour. Artists, locations, and all other necessary information can be found at aaeh.org.

Plein Air Painters at Ashawagh

Plein Air Peconic will celebrate its 10th anniversary with an exhibition at Ashawagh Hall in Springs Saturday through Monday. A reception will take place on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., and there will be an opportunity to meet the artists over coffee on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The group will show artworks that feature the beaches, farms, and wetlands of the East End, many of which have been preserved with the help of the Peconic Land Trust, whose mission the artists support. A portion of all sales from the exhibition will be donated to the trust.

Participating artists include the painters Casey Chalem Anderson, Susan D’Alessio, Terry Elkins, Michelle Margit, Gordon Matheson, Joanne Rosko, Eileen Dawn Skretch, and the photographers Tom Steele, Kathryn Szoka, and Ellen Watson.

“Growing Farmers,” a 16-minute documentary about the new wave of East End farmers, will be shown each morning at 11:30.

Rowenna Chaskey at Estia

“As Within, So Without,” an exhibition of photographs by Rowenna Chaskey, will open at Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor with a reception next Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and remain on view through April.

Ms. Chaskey, who received a B.F.A. in art, design, and media from Richmond, the American International University in London, worked with a medium-format Bronica camera to create images that explore the “double” and reflect on the invisible layers of consciousness. According to the artist, “the photographs are built upon the foundation of the internal world being reflected in the external . . . the external is merely a mirror of the internal.”

“Women Painting Women”

The Richard Demato Gallery in Sag Harbor will present its third “Women Painting Women” show, titled “The Tales We Tell Together,” from Saturday through Nov. 12. An opening reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

The exhibition will include representations of women by 30 female artists, many of whom will attend the opening. Among those participating are Nancy Boren, Rebekah Bynum, Mary Chiaramonte, Candice Chovanec, Yana Movchan, Sylvia Nitti, Isabel Olivares, Rebecca Tait, and Pamela Wilson.

Foss Book Signing

Cornelia Foss, whose solo exhibition will open at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Oct. 24, will sign copies of “Cornelia Foss: A Retrospective,” a monograph just published by Skira/Rizzoli Books, on Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the Gerald Peters Gallery in Manhattan.

Reading at Kramoris

Cassandra Langer, an art historian and critic, will read from her new biography, “Romaine Brooks: A Life,” on Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor.

Brooks, a painter, graphic artist, interior designer, and writer, was born in Rome in 1874 and lived over the years in New York City, Capri, London, Paris, Florence, and Nice. Ms. Langer has discovered previously unavailable source material that sheds new light on Brooks’s life and work.

Architectural Photos in Sag

“Beauty Is in the Details,” a show of photographs by Gary Beeber, is on view through Nov. 1 at Dodds & Eder Home in Sag Harbor. A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The exhibition features architectural photographs by Mr. Beeber, a painter turned photographer and documentary filmmaker. In his photographs, he concentrates on details that may not be readily seen from a distance, among them design details, woodwork, signage, and colors. The show includes images taken in Marrakesh, Rome, Florence, Puerto Rico, and throughout the United States.

Having a difficult time making sense of the dozens of films and events at the Hamptons International Film Festival? While the big films, such as the festival opener “Truth,” sell themselves, the quieter ones can be harder to parse. Star staffers took a look at a sampling; here are some reviews to sort out a few deserving films that might be overlooked in the rush to get the splashier tickets.

“The Champions”

Darcy Dennett

East Hampton, Saturday, 1:30 p.m.; Sag Harbor, Monday, 11 a.m.

“The Champions” is no ordinary story about a boy and his dog. In this debut documentary from Darcy Dennett, the boy is Michael Vick, a star professional football player, and the dogs are the pit bull terriers that Mr. Vick trained to fight, until he was busted in 2007 for running an illegal dogfighting operation.

Ms. Dennett, whose film is the win- ner of the 2015 Zelda Penzel “Giving Voice to the Voiceless” Award in the festival’s Compassion, Justice, and Animal Rights program, documents not one but three powerful stories.

The film follows the recovery and rehabilitation of the dogs themselves, including many that were able to lead lives as close to normal as can be hoped for, following their adoption by loving families. Parallel to the healing storyline is a tale of advocacy, in which breed dis- crimination threatens the lives of thousands of pit bulls nationwide that languish in shelters for years at a time or are euthanized simply because they are pit bulls. And then there’s the matter of Mr. Vick himself, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback who served 18 months in prison, returned to the N.F.L. to play for the Philadelphia Eagles, picked up new endorsements, and claimed to have repaid his debt to society, but who refused to speak with a journalist who had adopted one of the victimized dogs.

“The Champions” features interviews with the dogs’ caretakers, animal welfare experts, and others with direct insight into Mr. Vick’s conspiracy conviction related to dog-fighting. And while the dogs can’t speak for themselves, in many cases Ms. Dennett is able to capture what certainly looks like absolute joy on their faces while being filmed in their new homes.

The film is certain to evoke feelings, whether it’s frustration with breed discrimination or Mr. Vick’s rebound to athletic stardom or pride inspired by the kind people who helped the dogs recover. Ms. Dennett’s gentle but direct and detailed storytelling makes for an inspirational narrative filled with hope, not just for the former fight dogs but also for the breed at large. — CHRISTINE SAMPSON

“Embrace of the Serpent”

Ciro Guerra

East Hampton, Saturday 8 p.m., and Sunday 3:15 p.m. 

Like the 1986 film “The Mission” and the 1985 historical novel “Black Robe,” “Embrace of the Serpent,” Colombia’s submission for the Academy Awards and a Hamptons International Film Festival competition film, starkly presents the horror that colonialism vis- ited upon indigenous people. Here, the setting is the Amazonian region of South America during the rubber boom of the early 20th century, as well as the brief second boom brought on by World War II. Inspired by the experi- ences of the German explorer and eth- nologist Theodor Koch Grunberg and the American biologist Richard Evans Schultes, as described in their diaries, “Embrace of the Serpent” is a sad yet powerful illustration of Europeans’ ca- pacity for arrogance and cruelty.

Karamakate, a shaman carrying the traditions, mythology, and knowledge of his people, has retreated deep into the rainforest following the near-eradication of his tribe. Forty years apart, he experiences lengthy, close, and combative relationships with two German scientists, both in search of a rare and sacred plant.

Their common humanity notwith- standing, the shaman and the explorers could not be more foreign to one another. The former owns virtually nothing but is in complete harmony with his jungle home and in full possession of the wisdom to maintain nature’s balance. The latter, encumbered by material goods, hail from an industrial, conquering civilization in the act of feeding its insatiable thirst for power and expansion.

Each a symbol of his culture, their conflicts mirror the clashing of civilizations occurring around them. The rubber barons have murdered or enslaved the indigenous population, while Christian missionaries, self-appointed saviors of the natives, stamp out their language, wisdom, and culture and impose their own, by force as necessary.

In this, his third film, the director Ciro Guerra has opted for black-and-white cinematography. In the colorless landscape that remains, it is as though the lushness of the vast rainforest has been drained of all life and vibrancy, a parallel to the shattered lives of its subjugated inhabitants. The river, too, is often forebodingly threatening as it snakes through the gloomy topography.

With “Embrace of the Serpent,” Mr. Guerra has resurrected an ancient civilization, albeit one in the midst of violent destruction. — CHRISTOPHER WALSH

“Fell”

Kasimir Burgess

East Hampton, today, 4 p.m.; Southampton, Saturday, 12:15 p.m.

The plot of “Fell,” the first feature by the Australian filmmaker Kasimir Burgess, can be reduced to a sentence. A girl is accidentally run over by a truck, the driver leaves the scene, and the father sets out to hunt down his daughter’s killer. Which is like saying “Ulysses” is about a guy who spends a day walking around Dublin.

Most of the story takes place in Australia’s Victorian Alps, a region of extraordinary beauty and heedless despoliation. Within the first eight minutes, we encounter Chris and his daughter enjoying an idyll in the woods, and a nearby logging site, where chainsaws and heavy machinery are clear-cutting ancient trees.

After Chris’s daughter is killed by a logging truck, the film follows his gradual shedding of the trappings of his urban life for the existence of a mountain man, living in a cabin in the woods and joining the same logging crew as the girl’s killer.

While Chris settles into the new job, the killer, Luke, is seen recording a loving message for his own daughter from a prison cell. When he tries to rejoin the loggers, halfway through the film, it is clear that he is not warmly welcomed, but only after he screams “I’ve done my time!” does Chris realize Luke is the man he’s seeking.

During the second half of the film, Chris not only works with Luke, he also shadows him, and his stealthy observation of Luke’s every move ratchets up the suspense to an almost unbearable level.

Dramatic shifts from silence to noise, from stillness to motion, from long shot to close-up, from the tense to the idyllic, are underpinned by Chris’s silence and his gradual transformation into the man he set out to hunt. At the same time, his prey is revealed to be more complicated than he first seemed. Chris’s transformation brings to mind “Heart of Darkness,” for it is as much a psychological journey as a physical one.

Matt Nable as Chris and Daniel Henshall as Luke give compelling, nuancedperformances as haunted men in a story told more by image and expression than by words. The visual and sound editing and the breathtaking cinematography capture the stark beauty of the landscape and the violent means by which it — and the lives of men — can be changed forever. — MARK SEGAL

“The Great Alone”

Greg Kohns

East Hampton, Saturday, 2:15 p.m., and Sunday, 10:30 a.m.

“More people have summated Mount Everest than have successfully completed the Iditarod.”

So intones the voiceover near the beginning of “The Great Alone” — or would have, if there had been a voiceover, which, mercifully, there wasn’t through the entire documentary, but here rather a single stark sentence in black type against a vast, and I mean vast, field of windswept Alaskan wastes. Far in the distance, into the all-encompassing whiteness, our hero, Lance Mackey, and his team of sled dogs gradually disappear. You wouldn’t be surprised if you never heard from him again.

It’s just one of a number of stunning images in Greg Kohs’s film, which follows Mr. Mackey’s 2013 attempt at his 12th Iditarod, the “last great race,” traversing 1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome. We come to learn that he has not only won previously, but did so four times in a row starting in 2007, a feat almost certain to go unmatched.

So this is a comeback story. As is Mr. Mackey’s entire life, for that matter — back from alcohol and drug abuse, back from pointless youthful rebellion, back from wasting time and money, back from a softball-size tumor in his throat that nearly killed him. (About that last setback: He’s from hard-bitten stock, and sure enough midrace we see him tear the filter off a butt and light up.)

But it is also a bitterness-turned-to-emulation tale of a father and a son, his dad being Dick Mackey, winner of the 1978 Iditarod in dramatic, one-second ahead fashion, his 8-year-old son looking on as he collapses at the finish line, his eyes betraying the same haunted stare his son’s would before too long, as if he’d beheld eternity.

Then again, no, it was merely frozen and godforsaken terrain seemingly without end, dotted with the occasional village little more than a shantytown. What a travelogue. - BAYLIS GREENE

“In Transit”

Albert Maysles

East Hampton, tomorrow, 12:15 p.m.; Southampton, Sunday, 3 p.m.

When Albert Maysles turns his trained documentarian’s eye toward the people aboard Amtrak’s Empire Builder long-distance train, he stitches together scenes that take us, like railway stops along the way, into a landscape that is, perhaps, the universal subject matter: people and their lives, and the things that change them.

Outside, as the train makes its three day trip between Seattle and Chicago, are the snow-covered mountains, the plains, the oil fields, the lights of one metropolitan area after another as the train pulls into its next stop. Inside, through a series of quiet observations and conversations along with comments made directly to the camera, a wide range of human experiences are revealed.

While understanding what’s going on in some of the conversations and exchanges is not always easy, repeated visits to a handful of riders help us connect and begin to see and care about them — the tough, hopeful, sweet, battered, and very real people, each of whom has a story worth telling.

The repeated shots of a sleeper car hallway, the rhythmic sound of the train on the tracks, interspersed announcements by conductors over the train’s public address system — all of these take the viewer into the confined, anonymous-yet-intimate feel of the train, with its unique opportunities for reflection and connection.

While those looking for more, some kind of upshot or denouement, may feel unsatisfied by this film, viewers who settle in, like riders making their private-yet-public worlds in the space of two seats on the Amtrak train, will be quite moved by its insights into its subjects. — JOANNE PILGRIM

“Missing People”

David Shapiro

East Hampton, tomorrow, 2 p.m. and Saturday, 7 p.m.

“Missing People” is a dark and moving documentary that plays with viewers’ expectations. The subject of this festival competition film is Martina Batan and her search, in middle age, forclosure on a tragic incident in her young life, the murder of her 14-year-old brother in 1978.

Shot in both New York City and New Orleans, the film follows both Ms. Batan’s journey of discovery and the story of the Ferdinand family, who have lost one of their relatives to a premature death, and, in Hurricane Katrina, most of their possessions.

The link between them is Ms. Batan’s obsessive collection of artworks by Roy Ferdinand, a self-taught New Orleans artist whose subject matter is based on violent crimes reported in the city. She meets with his family, hoping to learn more about him, while hiring a private detective to research her brother’s killing.

Ferdinand’s family is welcoming but cautious, not sure of Ms. Batan’s motives. But over time and several visits she earns their trust and affection. At the same time, her own story, including her successful career as a gallery director, comes out.

Although there is closure in the film, it comes as its own tragedy, raising the question of whether unraveling the mysteries of the past is worth the cost.

When should memories, and the totemistic worship of objects of memorabilia, be put aside? — JENNIFER LANDES

“Take Me to the River”

Matt Sobel

East Hampton, tomorrow, 1:45 p.m. and Saturday, 6 p.m.

“In the end . . . the real story isn’t on the screen, it’s unfolding inside of the heads of everyone in the audience,” Matt Sobel, the director of “Take Me to the River,” said in an online Q & A with the Hamptons International Film Festival. His quiet and unsettling feature-film debut, one of the competition films, raises more questions than it answers, and those questions are likely to keep rolling around in your brain for days.

Ryder, a gay teenager from California, is in Nebraska for a big maternal family reunion, and no, his mother has not told the family that he is gay, urging him not to make an issue of his sexuality on their brief visit with her relatives. It’s not about you, his parents tell him. From that first lie-by-omission to just about everything that happens afterward, that couldn’t be more true. Even when Ryder is at the center of the drama, it’s not really about him.

There is much that sets him apart from his conservative relatives who have never been far from the old family farm, and it’s clear they don’t know what to make of him. He’s an outcast amongthem, even though they don’t know the central truth of his young life. The only one who seeks him out is his 9-year-old cousin Molly, who seems far more sure of herself than he does, but may be too young to understand her own actions. A bizarre but unexplained incident between them puts Ryder at the center of a drama neither he nor the audience can quite comprehend, and tangles him in a psychological web with his mother’smercurial brother.

What happened? Was someone hurt? Who was responsible? Did anything happen at all? Will there be retribution or reconciliation, and if so, for what? The audience, just like Ryder, his parents, and most everyone else in the film, is left guessing.

That unknown is emblematic of all the unspoken truths in “Take Me to the River,” and brings with it an uncomfortable sense of foreboding that permeates the film. The message, perhaps, is that truth cannot exist in any real way without trust.

The cast strikes just the right tone in this ambiguous tale. Logan Miller as Ryder and Ursula Parker as Molly are spot on, and Josh Hamilton brings a disturbing duality to his role as the uncle. — CARISSA KATZ

“When I Live My Life Over Again"

Robert Edwards

Guild Hall, tomorrow, 1 p.m.; Sag Harbor, Saturday, 5 p.m.

In “When I Live My Life Over Again,” Christopher Walken plays an aging singer just famous enough and wealthy enough to live full time in what he terms “the slums of the Hamptons‚“ or what locals might call up in the woods.

As his daughter Jude drives east from New York City, flashes of Queens, midisland, and then familiar South Fork landmarks come into view. The filmmaker paints with a broad brush, showing East Hampton scenes, then Southampton scenes, and then back to East Hampton again, obviously favoringthis flow of imagery to exact verisimilitude.

Jude, also a singer, played by Amber Heard, is having a mid-career crisis. She leaves the city to sort things out in her father’s house, a move she immediately regrets when the rest of her family presents< itself in all of its disdain. Her stepmother, played by Ann Magnuson, treats her like a servant and Corinne, her sister, is condescending and perfect with a husband and son.

Jude’s pink hair marks her as a misguided rebel. Her affair with a married man, who happens to be her analyst, seems hackneyed but works as a short-hand guide to her troubling choices. Although she pegs her problems to life in the city, it is clear that a new or temporary life in the Hamptons is not going to do her any favors either.

Still, she finds some space to grow and learns some valuable lessons, from her father’s mistakes as well as his successes. Whether she will ultimately profit from them is uncertain, but she does leave his house with a sense of hope and a better understanding of how far her talent could take her if she was just a bit more disciplined and a lot less scared. — JENNIFER LANDES