In an April interview in The Star, Jamie Hook, the executive director of the Sag Harbor Cinema, said, “There should be so many roads to this theater that everybody finds a way to be here.” Judging from the theater’s Memorial Day Weekend grand opening (it launched “softly” in April), the programming does indeed offer something cinematic for everybody.
In addition to brand-new blockbusters, silent films, retrospectives, documentaries, Hollywood classics, family matinees, and tributes to Black and Latino film, the weekend will see the opening of the third floor and its Green Room, a members’ lounge and outdoor terrace with panoramic views over Sag Harbor.
Friday the cinema will premiere John Krasinski’s highly anticipated horror film “A Quiet Place Part II” in its Cinema 1, whose state-of-the-art Dolby Atmos sound system, which makes surround sound three-dimensional, is superbly suited to a film whose sound design is critical. Leslie Shatz, a noted sound designer, will discuss the importance of a film’s soundscape with Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the theater’s artistic director, after Saturday’s screening.
The cinema’s first retrospective program will be devoted to the legendary documentarian and longtime Sag Harbor resident D.A. Pennebaker and his partner Chris Hegedus. It will kick off tomorrow with a screening of “Don’t Look Back,” Pennebaker’s cinema verite portrait of Bob Dylan and his 1965 tour of the England. After the showing, Ms. Hegedus will answer questions, and G.E. Smith, who has toured with Dylan, will perform several of his songs. An exhibition of photographs of Bob Dylan, based on the documentary, by Joseph Baldessare is also on view.
A screening of “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” Alfonso Cuaron’s film starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, will be the first in a series devoted to Cinema Tropical, the leading distributor of Latin American films in the United States. The founder of Cinema Tropical, Carlo Gutierrez, will introduce the program, and Carlos Cuaron, the film’s co-writer, will take questions afterward.
The weekend will also include two screenings of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” in a 35mm print, Saturday and Monday matinees of Disney’s 1951 classic “Alice in Wonderland," and a showing of “Gravity,” Mr. Cuaron’s multiple Oscar-winner.
Also on the schedule is “The Story of a Three-Day Pass,” the groundbreaking 1968 film by the Black filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles that Richard Brody of The New Yorker ranked "among the great American films of the '60s."
The weekend will feature two classic Hollywood comedies. William Wellman’s 1937 “Nothing Sacred,” written by Ben Hecht and recently restored by the Museum of Modern Art, satirizes idealized small-town America and, decades ahead of its time, celebrity culture. “Speedy” (1928), the last silent feature to star Harold Lloyd, showcases not only the bespectacled comedian but also a cameo by Babe Ruth and a series of climactic stunts.
Programs of short films by local emerging filmmakers will round out the opening weekend on Saturday afternoon, when the filmmakers will discuss their work with Ms. Vallan.
The cinema’s website is the place to go for screening dates and times, and to buy tickets.
