Artists Alliance at Ashawagh

    The Artists Alliance of East Hampton, which was founded in 1984 in honor of Jimmy Ernst, will show art by more than 50 of its members at its “Fall Art Exhibit” at Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend. Paintings, drawings, sculpture, mixed-media works, and photographs will be on view through Monday. An opening reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Copyright for Artists

    The Community Arts Project will sponsor a copyright law seminar on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Springs Presbyterian Church. The class, led by Gale P. Elston, a New York City attorney, will focus on visual artists’ rights. Tea will be served afterward.

    The class will cover what rights visual artists have and the best ways to protect them, including through a copyright filing. Ms. Elston will help define originality from a legal standpoint, examining case law to help illustrate the concept. Ownership and transfers, infringement, and fair use are other concepts to be explored.

    Participants have been asked to have with them photocopies or color photos of a favorite work in order to copyright it. The instructor will review and revise the forms for submission. A portion of the class fee of $35 will be donated to the church.

New at Crazy Monkey

    The Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett will feature the work of two longtime members, Lance Corey and June Kaplan, in a show opening tomorrow. Also on view will be a group show by the art cooperative’s members.

    Mr. Corey is inspired by Abstract Expressionist painting in his “neo-primitive” style. Ms. Kaplan paints what she terms “dreamscapes,” which evoke “a place I imagine, bringing order through abstraction.” Other artists with work on view will be Andrea McCafferty, Daniel Schoenheimer, Barbara Bilotta, Jim Hayden, Jana Hayden, Ellyn Tucker, Bob Tucker, Tina Andrews, Sarah Blodgett, Dianne Marxe, and Sheila Rotner.

    The exhibition will be up through Oct. 28. A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

East Enders in London

    Beginning on Wednesday, the Shizaru Gallery in London will show “Bad for You,” organized by Beth Rudin DeWoody of Southampton and featuring a number of artists from the East End of Long Island. The show will examine the relationship between art and vice, playing with themes of self-destruction, drug use, alcoholism, gambling, materialism, vanity, and smoking, among other taboos or reckless behaviors, in a judgment-free environment, leaving it up to the viewer to make the call.

    Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Jameson Ellis, Matthew Satz, and Steve Miller are some of the artists whose work will be in the show. It will remain on view through Nov. 23.

Neoteric’s “AudioVision”

    This weekend Neoteric Fine Art in Amagansett will hold the Amagansett AudioVision Festival, a three-day event featuring visual art, live music, screenings, performance art, installations, and projections, to run alongside the Hamptons International Film Festival.

    The events will kick off a month-long two-part visual art exhibition, “AudioVision,” with the work of Warren Padula, Peter Dayton, Caterina Verde, Christine Sciulli, Sunny Khalsa, and Andrea Cote. The “Vinyl Art Show,” showing work executed on vinyl records and album covers, will take over another room in the gallery.

    Tomorrow at 4 p.m., several D.J.s will be accompanied by a light show and laser mapping. Short films will be screened outdoors starting at 8:30 p.m., and a “silent disco,” with headsets playing each D.J.’s personal channel, will take place from 10 until midnight. Peter Dayton, donning his Rock ’n’ Roll Shrink persona, will present a performance piece.

    On Saturday and Sunday, the gallery will offer music by Olde Sake, Dalton Portella, San Joaquin, and the Montauk Project from 4 to 8 p.m., screenings from 8:30 to 10 p.m., fire dancing, and a performance piece by Leanna Pascual. Mr. Dayton’s Rock ’n’ Roll Shrink will return to take appointments.

    Admission to these events is $10 at the door, which will go toward medical costs accrued by Mark Schmitt, a young East Hamptoner involved in a serious accident last year. Food and refreshments will be available.

Grenning’s Autumn Show

    The Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor will have a reception for its “Autumn Group Show” on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. It will remain on view through Nov. 10.

    The show will include pieces by a new artist to the gallery, Lynn Sanguedolce of California. Her figurative work will be complemented by landscapes of California by Ben Fenske and images of the Italian countryside by Marc Dalessio. Barbara Thomas of Springs will contribute paintings of local fish. Works by Colin Berry and Michael Kotasek will also be shown.

“Amen” at Hampton Hang

    Hampton Hang in Water Mill will show “Amen,” work by Charlotte Filbert with a theme of human sex trafficking, which she looks at obliquely by challenging materialism and demonstrating “the ability of the human spirit to overcome darkness,” according to Ashley Dye, a gallery director. The message of the show is that “while some women buy their femininity, others are forced to sell theirs.” Ms. Filbert examines this idea through paintings and a collection of handbags and accessories she painted.

    A reception will be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will be on view through Nov. 6.

Vered’s “Needful Things”

    “Needful Things” will open today at the Vered Gallery in East Hampton with a collector’s preview at 5 p.m. Work by Colin Christian, Grant Haffner, Ray Caesar, Adam Handler, and Ron Agam will be featured, as will selections by Yayoi Kusama, Will Cotton, David Hockney, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Gallery II will show modern work by artists such as Milton Avery, Pablo Picasso, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Fairfield Porter.

    The show is on view through Dec. 3.

Sixth Sax by the Seashore

    The Halsey Mckay Gallery in East Hampton will present “Sixth Sax,” a group show with a focus on sculpture and organized by Patrick Brennan, beginning Saturday. The show will include work by Colby Bird, Ned Colclough, Alex Da Corte, Sarah Dornner, Amy Granat, Jesse Hamerman, Joseph Hart, Adam McEwen, Ned Vena, and J.D. Walsh.

    Mr. Brennan has chosen works that “draw unlikely connections between historical forms to create their own, surreal language,” according to the gallery, offering “a tableau full of subtle contradictions and dialectics.” What remains is “a love of history but a disregard for genre — or rather a love of genre as speculative material, leading to a free-flowing chain of objects and images.”

    A reception will be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view through Nov. 11.

   Sometimes, late is much better than never. Such is often the case with the last-minute additions to the Hamptons International Film Festival, which can end up being some of the most talked-about films of the year.

    David Nugent, the director of programs for the festival, said last Thursday that movies in the past such as “Up in the Air,” “My Week with Marilyn,” and “Slumdog Millionaire” were among the most exciting films they had screened and all were put in well after deadline.

    The 20th anniversary of the festival this year did put more pressure on him, he said, to “dig deeper and scour more to try to find films that would reflect the aims of the festival and delight audiences, but we are always constrained by the films that are out there.” He called the recent additions a microcosm of this effort. “It’s a wide range for all sorts of people.”

    “Cloud Atlas” is an example of a big film, he said, that is also “auteur filmmaking by the makers of ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Run Lola Run,’ ” — Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, and Andy Wachowski. It is a $100 million film, but “is not a silly sci-fi movie made to sell action figures. It’s from a dense, well-loved book that tells the tale of six different times and generations.” Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, and Susan Sarandon star.    

    The festival will also include Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, “Quartet,” about a retirement home for classical musicians. Maggie Smith stars in this adaptation of a comedic play with Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, and Michael Gambon. “It’s very good and much funnier than I thought it would be,” Mr. Nugent said.

    Some of the late additions come from the Toronto Film Festival, which predates the Hamptons festival by a couple of weeks and can be a proving ground for films. “A film might have its world premiere in Toronto and we are curious as to how it will be received, so we wait until Toronto to see,” he said. A number of films also find distributors at that festival. “When ‘The Wrestler’ sold at Toronto, we decided to include it” in 2008.

    Other times it is a matter of a film not being finished in time for the regular deadline, but it might still be of great interest to the audience here. For example, a documentary about the former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, completed only a few weeks ago, was just added. Mr. Koch, who is 84, plans to attend the screening, health permitting, according to Mr. Nugent.

    “Kon-Tiki,” another late arrival, will be Norway’s submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year. It is a feature film based on a documentary made half a century ago that won the Academy Award the year it was made. It is about an explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, who floats off on a raft to prove his theory that the settlers of the Polynesian Islands were from the Americas, not Asia, allowing prevailing regional currents to settle the matter. For Mr. Nugent, it is a personal favorite. “It has big storms and sharks and relates to our experience living on an island here. I love films like that.”

    “No Place on Earth,” which had its world premiere in Toronto, is a documentary about a family that takes to the caves in their Ukrainian town to hide from the Nazis for some 18 months, beginning in October of 1942. “A cave explorer found evidence of people in the caves from more recent times than the usual prehistoric dwellers and set about to figure it out,” Mr. Nugent said.  “The film is constructed of recreations and reminiscences of those who were children at the time but who had these vivid recollections.”

    Other films not in the original program include “Out of the Clear Blue Sky,” by Danielle Gardner, a full-length documentary that follows those connected to Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm with offices in the World Trade Center that suffered the largest loss by a single entity during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “The Zen of Bennett,” a film about Tony Bennett and his unique approach to life, was shown this summer at Guild Hall and has recently been added to the festival schedule.

    “Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007” looks at the history of the James Bond movie franchise that will be 50 years old tomorrow, Oct. 5, the anniversary of the release of “Dr. No” in 1962. A short film, “Dreaming American,” tackles immigration in a narrative format, with a cast led by Giancarlo Esposito.

    Film times and venues can be found on the film festival Web site, hamptonsfilmfest.org.

   The Hamptons International Film Festival has feature and short films from all over the globe, but one of the opportunities the festival affords is to see films that may never pass this way again, made by friends and neighbors, on a big screen. There are a number of films this year made or contributed to by South Fork natives or part-timers. The Star caught up with three of them to hear about their stories and their films.

 Casey Brooks, Editor:

“Plimpton: Starring George Plimpton as Himself”

A true local boy, Casey Brooks grew up in East Hampton and went to the School of Visual Arts after graduating from East Hampton High School. He started out working on short films and for commercial film and photography directors, and did some interview documentaries, among them “Still Bill,” on Bill Withers.

Film editing was something he “stumbled into. A commercial director needed someone to organize media. I was doing some photo stuff and I fell into full-time editing mode, moving up the ranks that way.” He said he appreciated the way editors shaped the final product. “They have a lot of power, especially in documentary films.”

He came on in the middle of the making of “Plimpton,” not knowing much about the subject. The directors, Luke Poling and Tom Bean, “had a rough cut, not really cohesive. It needed to be sussed out. I knew it was going to be a lot of work. So I quit my job and went head-deep into film.”

What little he knew about the subject became much more through the work on the film and his discussions with Mr. Bean, who was also a friend. “If you could do a full feature documentary on George it would have to be in 12 parts, not a half-hour movie.” The filmmakers settled on 89 minutes.

They decided to focus on how he became who he was — the founder and editor of The Paris Review, the bon vivant everyman adventurer who never backed down from a challenge, be it playing as a professional quarterback or a percussionist for the New York Philharmonic — from a Mayflower heritage of lawyers, publishers, politicians, and even a Civil War general.

    “He was a kid who wanted to be a writer, didn’t know how. He used his privilege and spirit to reach all these people. He started The Paris Review and stumbled into these roles of participatory journalism. The one thing we wanted to show was how important The Paris Review was to him. It was the glue that held him and his work together. In fact, he was fund-raising for it up until the night he died. It had some of the best American writers of his and other generations.”

    Although Plimpton was known here for his busy social life and his love of fireworks, his heyday was a few generations removed from the East Hampton of Mr. Brooks’s youth. “It was such a different world than the world I grew up in, it was hard to relate to it.” Still, he said, “It is easy to romanticize the writers of that era, especially how much fun they had.”

    “He looked for any excuse to throw a party, have the Grucci family light some fireworks, whenever he could. He could go to five parties a night, and usually did.”

    The film culled some 50 interviews and a vast amount of archival footage, including Plimpton on the road with Robert F. Kennedy the day before Kennedy was shot and killed. All of that material “made it really difficult to edit, there was so much. You almost prefer to work with less.”

Michael Halsband, Director:

“Growing Farmers”

    Michael Halsband is well known as a still photographer, but he has a number of music videos, commercials, and documentaries to his credit. His 18-minute film “Growing Farmers” tells the story of a new breed of young farmers who have come to the East End from desk jobs or other careers out of a commitment to locavore growing and eating and a way to find more meaning in their work.

    Mr. Halsband said being a part-time resident of Water Mill for 37 years and seeing the changes over time made him realize the importance of keeping the area’s traditions alive. The Peconic Land Trust has been helping these younger farmers find preserved land to buy or lease to keep their dream alive.

    “It’s so fundamental to the area — farming and agriculture — directing and co-producing the film was a great fit for me.” It was also a bit of a relief, he said, after spending a stressful time in India on a previous project.

    “I took everything I learned from that experience to this experience. I knew what we needed up front and needed at certain times,” in terms of resources and financial backing. “There was so much fresh energy from the farmers, everyone kept saying how much fun they were having.”

    The film visits a free-range chicken farmer on the North Fork, Sang Lee Farms, which has developed into a large distributor of lettuce and other produce; a Jamaican farmer growing his native staples, the wheat farmers from Amber Waves in Amagansett, and others.

    The only challenge in making the film was choosing where, of all the spectacular East End settings, to shoot.

    In the end, what Mr. Halsband has taken away from the experience is that “Life is important and happiness is important.  These are people looking for things less about commerce and more about a better quality of lifestyle, and food as essential element of being healthy and happy. Cheap food isn’t good food, and people are starting to realize that.”

Jack Heller, Producer:

“Refuge”

    Jack Heller, a part-time resident of Southampton for most of his life, realized about three years ago that making films here in the winter made sense not just for his bottom line but also as a boost to the off-season economy.

    “I noticed how quiet it was here in the winter and spoke to the local business people, who were marvelously supportive of my filmmaking in offering locations, catering, and other help. We just finished the third movie we’ve made in the last three years.”

    His latest film release, “Refuge,” which he produced with Dallas Sonnier, was directed by Jessica Goldberg from a play she’d written. The film often feels like a play in its sometimes claustrophobic attachment to the house where the heroine, Amy, lives as caretaker to her younger siblings after their parents abandon them. Yet the exterior shots are familiar: Catena’s market, long views over Meadow Lane, back roads that look deceptively like Anytown, America, but are immediately recognizable as South Fork locations. All the exteriors — the Blue Color Bar, the Hess station, the Princess Diner, and others — are in Southampton. Mr. Heller, who graduated from film school at the University of Southern California in 2004, and his crews do their interior shooting at East Hampton Studios.

    He has been making films since 2008 and has 15 in various stages of development. He said he likes to film here, both in helping train those interested in filmmaking and sometimes finding undiscovered talent among the extras. In the case of “Refuge” he has caught lightning in a bottle with the current “it” girl Krysten Ritter and Brian Geraghty, known from “The Hurt Locker.”

    He is looking forward to the festival screening for many reasons, one of which is being “able to see the film with the people I made it with,” all of whom are excited to take part in the screening. “Our crew becomes a family. There are no star turns, everyone sits at a communal table when we eat.” It’s difficult to understand the story of a film while being involved in the day-to-day making of it, he said. “It will be just a fun thing for them to see it come to fruition.”

   A piano recital by Tanya Gabrielian on Saturday marked the beginning of the 10th anniversary season of the Rising Stars piano series at the Southampton Cultural Center.

    Ms. Gabrielian has performed on four continents and in many top-name venues, has won a number of highly respected competitions, and recently completed studies at the Juilliard School as the only candidate accepted for the artist diploma program, which is a very selective postgraduate residency program.

    But perhaps even more interesting is her Art for Activism initiative, which, among other things, attempts to combat the stigma of mental illness. Projects have included an installation with the artist Fran Bull for the exhibit “In Flanders Field: A Meditation on War,” and Ms. Gabrielian has founded a biweekly interactive performance series for patients at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. For this work she was awarded the 2011 McGraw-Hill Robert Sherman Award for music education and community outreach.

    She says on her Web site that although many artists have dealt with mental health issues, she is troubled by the misconception that great art can be created only from suffering and pain. Making reference to this in her opening comments on Saturday, she said she was there to entertain, and indeed the evening was filled with pleasure of the highest order.

    Each performer has a different personality, of course, that comes across in the playing, interpretation, and choice of repertory. One pianist may be strong and fiery, another passionate, another turbulent and unsettled, or another virtuosic. While Ms. Gabrielian’s concert had these qualities in some measure, it was characterized above all by elegance and poise.

    The opening of the recital was J.S. Bach’s “French Suite No. 2,” which consists of six short movements mostly based on dance forms. Ms. Gabrielian’s tone was beautifully and evenly voiced, making each line clear and bringing out the inner voices with fine coloring.

   I will admit to the heresy that Haydn is not on my top-10 list of ­composers, but some of his piano sonatas could convince me otherwise. His “Sonata in E flat,” next on the program, was played with beautiful transparency and re­finement. The second movement, Adagio ­e Cant­abile (in a singing style), was a standout ­for its sensitivity. Ms. Gabrielian took the many disparate melodic and rhythmic elements and molded them into one in a way that was more graceful than is sometimes heard.

    The closing movements of both the Bach and the Haydn — a gigue and a minuet, each rendered in a highly stylistic manner by the composers — are not big or dramatic by design, and these choices perhaps gave an insight into the performer’s temperament. But it was clear from the enthusiastic response that the audience was fully captivated and transported.

    Moving to a very different kind of music, Ms. Gabrielian next chose three of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Etude-Tableaux” (Study Pictures). Rachmaninoff wrote two sets of these, and we heard Nos. 2, 3, and 7, Op. 33. It is believed that each etude was inspired by some visual stimulus, but in most cases the composer intentionally chose not to reveal the source.

    I think it doesn’t really matter, because the visual aspect was not the ultimate goal of the music. Perhaps it’s even better that we don’t know, because in Rachmaninoff’s unique harmonic and textural style the aural images can involve the listener fully without needing a visual reference.

    Ms. Gabrielian handled the high technical demands of these etudes with ease, but, more important, the incredible multilayered translucent textures had a sublime shimmer to them. The dictionary defines translucent as allowing light, but not detailed images, to pass through, and this is a fitting description of this music, given its aforementioned visual-aural nature.

    For me, Etude No. 3 was a favorite, with its tranquil, sustained, yet ever-changing character. No. 7, which the composer did say was inspired by a country fair, was a delight. Here we heard some of the more vigorous and buoyant fortissimo sounds of the piano. Against the more restrained parts of the program, these qualities stood out in great contrast, and at the end it brought some hearty bravos from the listeners.

    For a closing, Ms. Gabrielian chose Franz Liszt’s setting of the Waltz from “Faust” — from the happy parts of “Faust,” she emphasized. Again she showed fabulous technique along with insightful playfulness. In a couple of spots the music nearly thundered with the compelling waltz rhythm, showing that for her the technique can be held in reserve, and used at the command of the music.

    After this, the calls from the audience for an encore couldn’t be denied. We were treated to a song by Mikhail Glinka, “The Lark,” as transcribed for piano by Mily Balakirev.

    There are eight more events in the Rising Stars anniversary celebration, going until December 2013, including two duo concerts; most performers have been heard as Pianofest participants. Next up is Margarita Shevchenko on Nov. 10. The concerts begin at 7 p.m. on Saturdays, and stay roughly within a one-hour format, allowing for an early evening or other plans. An added bonus is that there are video screens on each side of the auditorium, so that anyone who cannot see the keyboard or performer well can get an unobstructed view from the screens. Tickets are $15.

    More information is at southamptonculturalcenter.org. More about Ms. Gabrielian and her Art for Activism initiative can be found at tanyagabrielian. com.

Business of Art Returns

    Jane Martin’s popular four-part seminar, “The Business of Art,” will return this week beginning Monday with “The Professional Artist,” part one of the discussion, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

    The series deals with learning how to operate as a professional artist, offering a primer on consignments, contracts, marketing, invoicing, resale certificates, Web sites, databases, catalogues, crowdfunding, pricing, social media, press coverage, galleries, and studio visits.

    Classes will be held on Monday and Thursday, this week and the week of Oct. 1 at the Springs Presbyterian Church on Old Stone Highway.

    Monday’s class looks at consignments and contracts with galleries, invoicing clients and eliminating tax on art supplies with a resale certificate. Next Thursday’s class will focus on pricing, organizing, building a Web site, catalogs, grants, crowdfunding, and other resources.

    Future classes will delve into promotion and selling. Each seminar will include several handouts and is open to any artist at any point in his or her career. Each class is $40, payable by cash or check only, a portion of which will be donated to the church. Reservations are not necessary. More information is available through [email protected].

Decoy by Hand

    Robert Hand and Robert Hand Jr. will demonstrate decoy carving on Saturday at the Bridgehampton Historical Society’s archives building at 2539-A Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.

    Mr. Hand is known for his carvings of both decoys and songbirds. Both he and his son have competed in carving contests around the country. They work out of a small shop in Sag Harbor and grew up in Bridgehampton.

    Admission is free as part of the Bridgehampton Historical Society’s Heritage Celebration.

Lightning Round Is PechaKucha

    The Parrish Art Museum’s well-attended Lightning Round series is now called PechaKucha Hamptons in recognition of its official status gained from the PechaKucha Foundation in Toyko, from which these rapid-fire presentations took their inspiration.

    Participants in these dynamic talks will have six minutes to present 20 slides describing what they do, be it art, food, or business-oriented.

    The participants for the next event at the Parrish this evening at 6 include artists, dealers, writers, and restaurateurs such as Sydney Albertini, Theo Coulombe, Alexandra Fairweather, Hiroyuki Hamada, Silas Marder, Joe Pintauro, Toni Ross, Sabina Streeter, and Don Sullivan.

Beck Is Back

    Julian Beck Fine Paintings in Bridgehampton will show new work by Roz Cole, Marilyn Church, and Alexander Russo beginning Saturday with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m.

    Ms. Church is known for her courtroom renderings and paints abstract paintings in her downtime. Mr. Russo is the former dean of the Corcoran School of Art. Ms. Cole’s works on paper range from fanciful abstractions to more realistic doodles and likenesses.

    All three artists are longtime residents of the East End.

Kanovitz Talk in N.Y.C.

    Molly Barnes, an art dealer from Los Angeles who hosts a series of art talks at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City, will present Carolyn Oldenbusch, the widow of Howard Kanovitz, speaking on the art of her late husband, today at noon.

    Ms. Oldenbusch will give a PowerPoint presentation on Mr. Kanovitz, whose paintings in the 1960s helped launch Photo-Realism as an artistic genre. He died in 2009. Prior to adopting a realist style, he was a student of abstraction with Franz Kline and was also a musician, who studied the trombone and played in a jazz band with Larry Rivers.

    Ms. Barnes’s lecture series is more than two decades old. Her talks deal with an eclectic mix of artists and other related personalities presented in a lively format and with a brown bag lunch.

   “It had rained heavily for several days and then the morning sun came out on a lovely September day.” So begins the true story of a hurricane of unprecedented ferocity, one that caught residents of the East End by surprise on an afternoon 74 years ago tomorrow.

    The account is mounted on a poster board that visitors see upon entering the East Hampton Historical Society’s Clinton Academy, where “The Long Island Express: Rare Photographs of East Hampton Town After the 1938 Hurricane” will be exhibited through Oct. 8.

    The collection of 122 photographs depicts destruction on a scale that would otherwise be difficult to fathom. Huge trees completely uprooted, houses torn asunder, cars tossed this way and that — tidy villages rearranged in a matter of hours.

    And while one East Hampton resident lost his life and many houses and commercial buildings were damaged or destroyed, the exhibit also depicts the coming together of a community in the aftermath of sudden devastation.

    “It has its sad qualities, but is a part of the tapestry of life,” Richard Barons, the society’s executive director, remarked of the collection. “You can see [the hurricane’s] bonding qualities, the sense of survival, that ‘we will persevere.’ ”

    The majority of the photographs are from the society’s own collection, which, Mr. Barons said, “grew by leaps and bounds by two collections that came to us within a year.” The troves to which he refers were taken by Earl Gardell, who lived in Amagansett, and Edward Jewett Jr., who lived in East Hampton. Peggy Sherrill, granddaughter of Mr. Gardell’s neighbor Herbert Edwards, donated the Gardell photos, while Mr. Jewett’s photographs were provided by his wife, Camilla, who has lived just three-tenths of a mile down Main Street from Clinton Academy for 63 years. The latter collection was discovered, among other photographs, in Ms. Jewett’s house last year.

    Mr. Gardell’s photographs mostly depict downtown Amagansett and Beach Hampton, said Mr. Barons, while the Jewett collection includes East Hampton and Montauk. Mr. Jewett documented destruction at the Maidstone Club, where he was a member, and Montauk’s fishing village, then at Fort Pond Bay.

    Mr. Barons took the original photographs, mostly two by three inches, to Reed’s Photo in East Hampton and Morris Studio in Southampton to be scanned and enlarged. “I always have them done in color,” he said of the black-and-white prints, “so you get the tonalities of what the original photograph looked like.”

    Along with the enlarged prints hanging at Clinton Academy are glass cases in which the originals, along with other artifacts, are displayed. A blown-up print of page one of The Star’s Sept. 22, 1938, edition, devoted to the hurricane, is also on hand, as is a book in which visitors with firsthand knowledge have recorded their memories. This, said Mr. Barons, has spurred plans for a round-table discussion, to be held on Oct. 19 at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church’s Session House, at which witnesses will tell their stories. Other visitors, Mr. Barons added, have brought their own photographs to the society “for the next exhibition.”

    As they were taken in the hurricane’s immediate aftermath, the photographs present an odd dichotomy of tranquillity amid a devastation that was probably unimaginable just two days earlier. When Mr. Jewett, a stockbroker working in Manhattan, learned of a hurricane battering East Hampton, where his parents lived, “he got in the car, but had a terrible time reaching here,” said Ms. Jewett, who is 101. “It was a disaster by the time he got to this end of the Island. There were trees down and all kinds of bad things to cope with.”

    Ms. Jewett’s mother-in-law was the sculptor Maude Sherwood Jewett. She and her husband had lived on the ocean since around 1911, Ms. Jewett said, and did not evacuate. “They said the ocean was coming right through the kitchen.” Her father-in-law may have exaggerated, she allowed, “but he said fish and eels were coming through the kitchen!”

    When Ms. Jewett came to East Hampton from New York City in 1939, the hurricane’s impact was still evident. “You could see where the trees were uprooted. Then the L.V.I.S. replaced most of them. They’re fully grown now, but I remember when a lot of them were planted,” she said.

    The show has jogged memories, resulting in the aforementioned written recollections and visitors’ photos. There may be even more to come.

    “I just went up to that drawer to see if I had more than I’d given to Richard,” Ms. Jewett told a visitor, “and I couldn’t­ get the drawer open — the thing sticks in summer, and the knob came off. I could probably find more, if I get that drawer open.”

   This year, the Hamptons International Film Festival is two decades old and exhibiting the kind of swagger that comes with age, showcasing a number of high-profile films and events in addition to its regular programs. While centered in East Hampton Village, as in previous years many films will be screened in other locations including Montauk, Sag Harbor, Southampton, and Westhampton.

It runs from next Thursday through Oct. 8.

   Karen Arikian, the executive director of the festival, said on Monday that in an environment where nonprofit arts ventures are having a difficult time surviving, 20 years is a significant landmark. She points to the longevity of board members such as the chairman, Stuart Match Suna, and Alec Baldwin’s longtime involvement as key to the festival’s continuity. “I refer to it as a high-quality small gem,” she said of the festival. Mr. Baldwin is serving as honorary chairman this year.

   She is also pleased with the festival’s continued efforts at collaboration, which this year include projects with the newspaper Variety for the festival’s Breakthrough Performers program, and with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the BBC, which are bringing a number of films from the United Kingdom to the festival. The festival also continues its collaboration with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is awarding a $25,000 prize to Jenny Deller for her film “Future Weather.” The Sloan Foundation will present its screenwriters’ lab selections on Oct. 7 at 4 p.m at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church Session House with Fisher Stevens directing and Melissa Leo and Kevin Corrigan among others reading.    The festival is partnering with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a tribute to Ann Roth, a costume designer for more than 100 films. Locally, the festival’s involvement with the schools and the community is also a priority and has received special attention this year with a number of outreach initiatives.

    The festival will open next Thursday with a United States premiere of “Love, Marilyn,” a documentary by Liz Garbus that looks into the personal life of Marilyn Monroe and will air on HBO next year. “Not Fade Away,” the film directorial debut of David Chase, the creator of “The Sopranos” series for HBO, will be the closing night film on Oct. 7.

    In between, there will be discussions with Alan Cummings, Richard Gere, and Stevie Nicks, screenings of upcoming major movie releases such as “Argo,” directed by and starring Ben Affleck, “Silver Linings Playbook” by David O. Russell and starring Bradley Cooper, and the usual assortment of film selections — shorts and features, narratives and documentaries — from around the globe.

    There are a number of free community programs, such as the Rowdy Hall Talks series, which are free at 10 a.m. every morning during the festival. There will be a special screening of “A Beautiful Mind” on Friday, Oct. 5 with a discussion following with John Nash, a Nobel laureate and the subject of the film. “Balibo,” the story of the Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, first president of East Timor, will be presented next Thursday at 4:30 p.m. A talk with Mr. Ramos-Horta to follow is part of the same series. A show of photographs of Nobel laureates, including Mr. Ramos-Horta, by Peter Badge will be on display at c/o the Maidstone, the festival’s headquarters for the weekend.

    According to David Nugent, the festival’s director of programming, the films were chosen for “their range of styles and risk-taking creative choices” and to represent “what the festival has endeavored to achieve for the last 20 years.”

    “Argo” is about a C.I.A. agent who attempted a daring rescue plan during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. “The Silver Linings Playbook” is centered on a bipolar son who moves back in with his parents, played by Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver, who wants to get his estranged wife back. “Not Fade Away” is the story of three friends in suburban New Jersey who decide to form a band after seeing the Rolling Stones on television.

    Other Spotlight Films will include Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie,” which will have a special family presentation next Thursday before the opening night film in East Hampton at 4 p.m., Stephen Frears’s “Lay the Favorite,” Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths,” and Terry George’s “Whole Lotta Sole.”

    Mr. George, who has a house in Noyac, was an Oscar winner for “The Shore,” the short film that was shown at last year’s festival. He was also the director of “Hotel Rwanda.” “Whole Lotta Sole” is a robbery caper set in Belfast starring Colm Meaney and Brendan Fraser.

    Speaking to The Star last year, Mr. George described his new movie as “a black comedy, with the underlying theme of Belfast after the Troubles — a new city with a new police force dealing with some old bad habits.” The “sole” in the title references a fish market robbery that is the catalyst for the story. “It was great to be there working on a full-length feature,” he said last year of his native Northern Ireland.

    Mr. George’s film is both a Spotlight Film and part of the Views from Long Island presentations. These films also include “59 Middle Lane,” a feature documentary by Greg Ammon about his sister, Alexa, and his tragic life after the murder of their adoptive father, Ted Ammon, in East Hampton and the death of their adoptive mother, Generosa Ammon, from cancer a few years following.

    Other films with a Long Island focus or filmmaker include “Growing Farmers,” a short documentary on the young farmers who are keeping the East End’s traditions alive, made by Michael Halsband, a photographer better known for his surfing and rock band images. “James Salter: A Sport and a Pastime” by Edgar Howard, Sandy Gotham Meehan, and Tom Piper, examines the life of the author, who lives in Bridgehampton, and his most famous work. “Montauk,” a seven-minute short film, focuses on the conspiracy theories surrounding the hamlet. “The Atomic States of America” by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce, Susan Rockefeller’s “Mission of Mermaids,” “Mondays at Racine” by Cynthia Wade, “Ocean Keeper” by Eileen Olivieri Torpey, and Jessica Goldberg’s “Refuge” are the other films in this series.

    The festival will continue its other programs such as its Films of Conflict and Resolution and its Golden Starfish Award competition. This year’s Films of Conflict and Resolution are “Beyond Right and Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness,” “Call Me Kuchu,” “One Day after Peace,” “War Witch,” and T.C. Johnstone’s “Rising From the Ashes,” which has won the festival’s 2012 Brizzolara Family Foundation Award for a Film of Conflict and Resolution. A panel discussion will follow its screening, on Friday, Oct. 5.

    The Golden Starfish contenders for best narrative film are Martin Lund’s “The Almost Man” from Norway, “Dead Man’s Burden” by Jared Moshe from the United States, “La Demora” by Rodrigo Pla from Uruguay, Mexico, and France, Umut Dag’s “Kuma” from Austria, and Cate Shortland’s “Lore” from Germany. The judges are Rachael Horovitz, a producer of “Moneyball” and the HBO film “Grey Gardens,” Joshua Rothkopf, a film writer at Time Out New York and chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, and Trudie Styler, an actress and director.

    The documentary competitors are Annie Eastman’s “Bay of All Saints” from the United States, Tora Martens’s “Colombianos” from Sweden and Spain, “El Huaso” by Carlo Guillermo Proto from Canada, Jesse Vile’s “Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet” from the United States and United Kingdom, and “Rising from the Ashes” from the United States, Rwanda, United Kingdom, and South Africa.

    Tickets and details about last minute listings, venues, dates, and times for screenings and events are available at hamptonsfilmfest.org. The box office this year is in the Retreat Boutique on Park Place in East Hampton and is open from noon to 6 p.m. on weekdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday through Wednesday. Beginning next Thursday, it will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through the end of the festival. Regular screenings are $15 with discounts for children, students, and those over age 65. Spotlight Films are $27 with discounts for those starting at or before 4 p.m. Most of the special events are $30.

“Home Bird”

Laura Wainwright

Vineyard Stories, $19.95

  In many aspects, Martha’s Vineyard, the sea-wind swept island off the coast of Massachusetts, presents a mirror to the South and North Forks. Geologically, we seem almost connected: low hills, salt ponds, rocky headlands, and sandy beaches.

    This familiarity must have been part of what made Laura Wainwright, who spent much of her childhood in East Hampton, and whose family still lives here, choose to make the Vineyard her home.

    She describes this moment of transition in her collection of essays, “Home Bird: Four Seasons on Martha’s Vineyard,” published this summer, when she and her husband, Whit Griswold, moved into a house that had been in his family. It was to be an experiment in living on the island full time. Her West Tisbury became like Gilbert White’s Selbourne, itself a collection of letters. Martha’s Vineyard for her is a place whose natural mysteries were a world unto themselves, worthy of a lifetime of exploration.

    Much of the writing in “Home Bird” first appeared as columns in The Martha’s Vineyard Times, yet the stories seem as much letters to a friend as anything else. There is a closeness to them, revealing perhaps the focus with which Ms. Wainwright views her world. Illustrations by J. Ann Eldridge accompany each essay.

    “Home Bird” is divided into four sections, starting with summer and swinging around the calendar. Some readers who know eastern Long Island, or really any of the coastal resorts, will find kinship with her sense that the year’s best months begin now, when the summer people have finally folded up their beach chairs and gone away.

    “Except for the fishermen competing in the annual Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, most of the summer boats and crowds are gone, and there’s a welcome sense of space,” she writes. Later in the year, when winter comes, she writes, “these stripped-down months are what keep me here. The short days hone something essential inside me. . . . The long nights, swirling with galaxies I can’t comprehend, challenge me and whet my appetite for spare simple truths.”

    These are immediate thoughts; each of the essays in the book give the sense of having been written down at the end of the individual days they describe. Little moments predominate, like a swim at a freshwater inland pond on a hot summer’s day when the rest of the island is at the beach.

    On a chance evening alone on the porch, she notices “the cottage next door is empty of its usual summer tenants. There are no sing-song voices playing hide and seek in the small yard. No screen doors bang. The grill sits unlit. The porch light is off. I notice three catbirds hopping along the low stone wall between our house and theirs. The undiluted quiet is a gift.”

    It is such contemplative precision that gives “Home Bird” its charm. The title comes, Ms. Wainwright writes, from an Englishism for a person who prefers to remain close to the nest. In an essay of the same name, she pairs fall’s swarms of departing college students with male hummingbirds and “flocks of brown cowbirds and masses of emerald-backed tree swallows, which cluster up on the rainbow-colored edge of the Gay Head cliffs in preparation for their group migration.” It is a deft and accurate comparison.

    The striking intimacy of “Home Bird” is present throughout. Writing about looking at the stars on a late-fall night, Ms. Wainwright almost confesses, “I love our watery planet so fiercely that I have to look away.”

    Spring comes (perhaps too soon for the reader’s taste and the author’s) at the end of the short volume with an essay about an estate sale some years after an elderly friend’s death and one about how the guilty pleasure of feeding the birds resulted in a disaster of a rat warren and 10 or more skunks taking up residence in her basement.

    “Home Bird” closes with the author’s recalling a walk in the woods as the native flowers began to bloom. “My step was light and my energy and focus were on what was right there in that moment. Full circle brought me back to the boardwalk across Duarte’s Pond and past the wild iris, but now I could savor them, with my feet firmly on the ground, spirits soaring.”

Eric Brown: In Transit

    Glenn Horowitz Bookseller will present “In Transit,” a solo exhibition of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by Eric Brown, beginning Saturday through Nov. 4.

    Mr. Brown finds inspiration in the architectural plans of airport structures, runways, bridges, and highways, with their implications of “constant motion, some place in between, coming from, or going to somewhere else.” There are both minimalism and abstraction in his paintings, with a layer of spray paint covering a more gestural oil painting that hints at an industrial landscape.

    An opening reception will be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Free Day at Guild Hall

    Guild Hall will participate in Smithsonian Magazine’s national “Museum Day Live!” on Saturday, with free admission all day, joining some 1,400 other participating venues for the eighth year of the event. Visitors will need to download a Museum Day Live! ticket at smithsonianmag.com/museumday/event.

    Current exhibitions on view are “Eric Fischl: Beach Life” and “Strong-Cuevas: Premonitions.”

Process Not Product

    The exhibition this weekend at Ashawagh Hall is “The Workshop Show 2012:  Process Not Product.” The artists include Abby Abrams, Patricia Feiwel, Elise Platt, Gabriele Raacke, Catherine Silver, Joyce Silver, and Rose Zelenetz.

Dennis Leri, the curator, has chosen works by artists who have attended his 3-D Mixed-Media workshop.

    The show will be open from Saturday at noon, with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m., through Sunday at 4 p.m.

Film Fest Posters

    The Peter Marcelle Gallery in Bridgehampton will show 20 years of Hamptons International Film Festival posters beginning on Saturday, with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will remain on view through the festival, closing on Oct. 8.

    Among the artists commissioned to design posters for the festival are Donald Baechler, Dan Rizzie, Donald Sultan, Eric Fischl, Barbara Krueger, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and April Gornik.

Don’t Waste My Time

    The Tripoli Gallery of Contemporary Art in Southampton will present an exhibition of unique prints and 16-millimeter film projections by Tin Ojeda called “Don’t Waste My Time,” beginning on Saturday and running through Oct. 29.

    Mr. Ojeda examines the “arbitrary — and sometimes absurd — anxiety attached to time,” according to the gallery, and the significance of the clock in contemporary culture. He uses it as an object in large-format film and silver gelatin prints and a series of film portraits, in which he captures his subjects over the course of several minutes, revealing more about them than would a single snapshot.

    A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Photography in Amagansett

    Neoteric Fine Art is presenting “The Inner Lens,” a group show of young photographers through next Thursday. The gallery will hold a reception on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

    The show’s focus, according to the gallery, is on how photography may reflect personal experience, an intimate worldview, and “self-voyeurism.” The artists include Mia Berg, Daniel Cabrera, Josh Cohen, Maggie Harrsen, Hailey Kohlus, Kate Petrone, Yaan Pessino, and Ingrid Silva.

Lambrecht in N.Y.C.

    Rick Wester Fine Art in New York City is presenting a survey of photographs by Laurie Lambrecht of Bridgehampton, taken in China in 2009. The works are a continuation of the artist’s examination of nature that began with her “Lake Tree” series taken in Lake Zurich, Switzerland, from 2004 to 2008.

    According to the gallery the latest series, while bold statements in form and color, retains the delicacy of “Lake Trees.” The show will be on view through Nov. 3.

Ivories Tinkling

    On Sunday at 3:30 p.m., Anne Tedesco will return to the Montauk Library to perform a concert of classical works for the piano by Bach, Gliere, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Schumann, and Chopin. 

    Ms. Tedesco has taught music history, theory, classical piano, and fine arts since 1982 at St. John’s University in Queens. She and her husband own a house in Montauk.

    The pianist was praised by The New York Times when she made her professional debut at Carnegie Hall in 1981 for her “intelligent articulation in Bach’s ‘Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue,’ ” and her “languid phrasing in Ravel’s ‘Miroirs.’ ”

Catch a Rising Star

    The 10th anniversary season of the Rising Stars Piano series at the Southampton Cultural Center will open on Saturday at 7 p.m. with Tanya Gabrelian performing Bach, Haydn, Rachmaninov, and the Mephisto waltz from “Faust.”

    Ms. Gabrielian, who is Armenian-born, was described by The London Times as “a pianist of powerful physical and imaginative muscle.” Her 50-minute performance will have no intermissions.

    A reception to meet the artist will follow. Tickets are $15; no charge for students with ID. Tickets can be purchased in advance at scc-arts.org or at the door 40 minutes prior to the performance.

    Other artists participating in the series include Margarita Schevchenko on Nov. 10, and Igor Lovchinsky on Dec. 8. In 2013, Michelle and Kimberly Cann will perform on April 6, Konstantin Soukhovetski on April 27, Awadagin Pratt on May 18, Orion Weiss and Anna Polonski on June 8, Anthony Molinaro on Sept. 28, Qi Xu on Nov. 9, and Di Wu on Dec. 14.

New Play Reading

    Guild Hall and the Naked Stage will present a staged reading of “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” by Rajiv Joseph on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Josh Perl will be the lead artist.

    The plot centers on two American Marines and an Iraqi translator who meet up with a tiger that roams war-torn Baghdad to find meaning, forgiveness, and redemption amid the city’s ruins. The play explores both the power and the perils of human nature.

    The Naked Stage’s productions are free.