Up-And-Coming Directors

The yearly slate of undergraduate films at the Hamptons International Film Festival has always offered an intriguing sneak preview of some of the country's best developing filmmakers. This year, the undergraduate program was particularly rich.

With themes ranging from religion and sex education to urban ills, the five short films in the program proved to be both quirky and provocative, a reflection of the film festival's overall content. The program also incorporated a range of approaches, including animation, drama, and humor.

Michael Dougherty's atmospheric animated film, "Season's Greetings," follows a ghoulish trick-or-treater who shows a would-be attacker a thing or two. Brad Abelson's mock 1950s sex-education film, "My Dingaling," had the audience laughing all through its five minutes. Mr. Dougherty studies at New York University and Mr. Abelson is from the University of Southern California.

It was the dramas, however, that proved to be the most gripping. David Ogden and Christopher Landon of Loyola Marymount University presented "Only Child," a disturbing, black-and-white look at a family in which a child is haunted by confusion over God, the Devil, and his dogmatic stepfather. Mr. Landon is the son of the late actor Michael Landon.

Lance Mungia, also of Loyola Marymount, drew from fairy tales with his cinematically fertile "A Garden For Rio," in which an old farmer turns his arid sun-burned field into a field of roses for him and his wife - at least in his mind.

Matt Mailer, a New York University undergrad and the son of the author Norman Mailer, captured lost urban youth in his 30-minute film, "The Money Shot." The film follows a documentary filmmaker whose indifference to the plight of his subjects - a young prostitute and her mugger friend - spells trouble for all three.

Mr. Mailer said during the question-and-answer session following the film that he had already been tapped to turn "The Money Shot" into a feature. That has already presented the requisite directorial dilemmas, he said. He loved the work of his actress, Aesha Waks, but "they want a star."

Each of the young directors received a $2,500 award from the Film Festival toward their next project - or perhaps to cover those maxed-out credit cards from the last one.