Arts

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.

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.

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 Mon- day at 6 p.m. at the center’s Levitas Cen- ter 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.

Soyeon Kate Lee, a Korean-American pianist who won first prize at the 2010 Naumburg International Piano Competition, will perform tomorrow at 6 p.m. in the Salon Series at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

The film director Sidney Lumet, who died in 2011 at the age of 86, directed 44 feature films, beginning in 1957 with “12 Angry Men” and concluding 50 years later with “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”

Take a peek inside the studio wall with the Artists Alliance of East Hampton’s 28th annual studio tour. An exhibition of photographs by Rowenna Chaskey, will open at Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor.

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 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.

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.

The Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center will hold a benefit gospel concert, “Songs of Solomon,” on Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will honor Stanley Nelson with its Career Achievement Award at this year’s festival, which will take place at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor from Dec. 3 through Dec. 6.

Mr. Nelson’s films have earned five Primetime Emmys, two awards from the Sundance Film Festival, two Peabodys, and he is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. While his films have explored a wide range of topics, he has been especially drawn to stories of the civil rights movement. His film “Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” will be shown at this year’s festival.

"Air Kites" by Richard Brockman will be read as part of the JDTLab on Tuesday.

The Met: Live in HD series will kick off its 2015-16 season at Guild Hall on Saturday at 1 p.m. with “Il Trovatore,” Verdi’s four-act tragedy. Its notoriously complicated plot includes revenge, mis- taken identity, rivalry between suitors, suicide, and execution, all pulled togeth- er by its “absolutely glorious” music, ac- cording to WQXR-FM radio’s “Opera in Brief.”

The Hamptons International Film Festival has partnered this year with the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration to bring short films made by students around the world to the East Hampton screen.

Take the high road! Dell Cullum will teach drone photography at the Long House Reserve on Oct. 17.

The Choral Society of the Hamptons will hold auditions for its next concert on Monday, by appointment, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. Rehearsals are usually held on Mondays from 7:30 to 10 p.m.

Another film from the 2013 documentary festival, “The Only Real Game,” directed by Mirra Bank of East Hampton, is now available for download from iTunes, Amazon.com, and the film’s website. “The Only Real Game” is about the importance of baseball to the people of Manipur, a remote and troubled corner of India beset by civil wars, martial law, drugs, and H.I.V./AIDS.

This year’s African American Film Festival, which will feature a stage play, spoken word performances, and live jazz as well as movies, will take place from next Thursday through Oct. 4 at the Southampton Arts Center on Job’s Lane.

Guild Hall’s JDT Lab will present “Theatre of the Oppressed: An Introduction to Forum Theatre,” live, interactive, and free, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Graduate students in applied theater from the City University of New York’s School of Professional Studies, along with Kasia Klimiuk, the lead artist, will stage a piece on social and human rights issues. After the performance, audience members can act out the changes they want to see in the world.

The fifth annual Sag Harbor American Music Festival will bring an eclectic mix of rootsy American sounds to that village this weekend.

The LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton will honor Dan Hinkley and Elizabeth Scholtz at its annual Landscape Awards Luncheon on Saturday.

Kenny Mann, a Sag Harbor filmmaker whose feature “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots” was shown at the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival in 2013, has written and produced “The Mtepe Shungwaya Sails Again: A Tribute to the Boat-Builders of Lamu,” a new 13-minute documentary that will be shown at the Maritime Museum of San Diego on Friday, Oct. 2.

Philippe Cheng, a previous contributor to The Star who lives in Bridgehampton, has published a book of his art photography titled “Still: The East End Photographs.” A book signing will take place at Barnes & Noble at Broadway and 83rd Street in Manhattan on Friday, Oct. 2, at 7 p.m.

Anna Jurinich, a Croatian-born artist will open at Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton with an exhibition of paintings exploring the human condition. The Tokyo photographer Daisuke Yokota will have his first solo exhibition in the United States at Harper’s Books in East Hampton.

The Southampton Cultural Center will take a different approach to theater with its presentation of “The Fantasticks,” which will open next Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and continue for three weekends.

A benefit reception and auction for the East End Special Players will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the home of Marie-Eve and Michel Berty at 44 Sayre’s Path in Wainscott.

Coming home takes on greater significance when you spend a majority of your life on the road. For Judy Car­michael, a renowned stride pianist and, more recently, vocalist, coming home is particularly sweet when it affords an opportunity to perform at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

The 12th annual OLA Film Festival, a program of acclaimed Latino films organized by Isabel Sepulveda de Scanlon of the Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island, will take place Friday, Sept. 25, through Sept. 27 at the Parrish Art Museum.

Our Fabulous Variety Show, an East End troupe of actors whose theatrical performances help raise money for nonprofits here, will present its 11th production, “Our Adventures in Wonderland,” at Guild Hall in East Hampton starting tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. and continuing with two programs on Saturday and three next weekend.

“Instruments of the People,” a free concert by Francisco Roldan, a classical guitarist, and Danny Mallon, a percussionist, will take place at the Montauk Library on Sunday afternoon at 3:30.