Amid celebratory statements in East Hampton Town Hall about a plan to put sand on the downtown Montauk beach, a stark reality remained: Nothing other than talk has been done to actually address coastal retreat.

It was toward the end of the 2014 Hamptons International Film Festival, and I had been asked to be a juror in the documentary film competition.

Such is the lot of the personal essayist: Sometimes you have to lead with “I.”

Netflix’s documentary series “Wrestlers” gets at the real America — you know, the oddball, likable one.

Watching people running at each other like careening trucks while safe in the comfort of one’s own home is probably something to atone for, and yet football is “as American as apple pie.”

I’ve always seen the South Fork as a giant outdoor Cinerama. But how movies have portrayed the area has been hit or (more often) miss.

Don’t worry, they’re not all about politics! Read on for the week in Star letters to the editor . . .

Much action in Springs in this week’s South Fork real estate report.

William J. Mann’s “Bogie & Bacall” plows into the star couple’s roughly decade and a half together — insightfully and exhaustively.

Mansell Ambrose married her longtime beau, Henry Beveridge, on Saturday afternoon at 4:30 in the gardens of Villa des Amis in Bridgehampton.

Jennifer Esposito’s film “Fresh Kills” dramatizes the lives of the often-silenced women who married or were born into the world of organized crime in the 1980s and '90s on Staten Island, where the filmmaker was born and raised.

Jack Evans’s talk at The Church in Sag Harbor about his adaptation-in-progress of Peter Matthiessen’s novel “Far Tortuga” will also include a theatrical performance based on the script and a screening of the trailer.

“Mary Heilmann: Waves, Roads, and Hallucinations” is a deep dive into the art and life of Ms. Heilmann that eschews talking heads in favor of the artist’s forthright voice and her artwork.

HIFF film “This World Is Not My Own” is a creative documentary that illuminates the life and work of a self-taught Black artist with 3D animation and motion-capture technology, as well as archival materials and interviews.

“RE:CYCLE — The Ubiquitous Bicycle” will bring 19 vintage bicycles to The Church in Sag Harbor, along with a selection of fine-art photographs and video art devoted to that mode of transportation.

Two HIFF features with local connections are “Ron Delsener Presents,” a documentary about the influential concert promoter who has a home in East Hampton, and “Rule of Two Walls,” a film about artists in Ukraine, exec-produced by the actor Liev Schreiber, a part-time East Ender.

Bay Street will host a rock ’n’ roll concert with Nancy Atlas and her band and a documentary on Jewish resistance fighters in World War II.

A chamber music trio will perform works by Haydn, Ravel, and Martinu at the Carl Fisher House in Montauk.

“The Chalk Garden” at Southampton Cultural Center, plant sale and members party at Madoo, concerts at LTV, Old Whalers Church, and Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, advice on fall gardens and sustainable lawn care.

Women from the New York School in new exhibit, author’s talk about an art world landmark, two painters at the Drawing Room, award for Lindsay Morris, a lecture and workshop at the Leiber Collection, an artist’s journey on film.