Hamptons Doc Fest features films with award-season buzz
A photograph by Ernest Cole, who chronicled South Africa's apartheid system, is seen in the film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found." Credit: Magnolia Pictures / Ernest Cole
This year's Hamptons Doc Fest launches Thursday with a slate of films that are already picking up awards-season buzz.
The festival will run until Wednesday, Dec. 11, at the Sag Harbor Cinema and the nearby Bay Street Theater.
At least six titles at the Hamptons Doc Fest are up for awards at the Cinema Eye Honors, an organization founded in 2007 that prides itself on recognizing crafts such as editing and cinematography within the documentary genre. One of those films, "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," has also been nominated for Best Feature Documentary by the International Documentary Association. That Los Angeles-based group has been bestowing awards since 1985; it will announce this year’s winners on Thursday.
The subject of "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a Black South African who became a photojournalist in the 1950s and began chronicling the daily social impact of his country’s apartheid system. Smuggling some of his photos with him on a trip to New York City, Cole secured a book deal and published "House of Bondage," which was banned in South Africa. The film’s director, Raoul Peck (2016's "I Am Not Your Negro," about the author James Baldwin), will speak at a screening via Zoom.
Other award-nominated films at the festival include "Union," about workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island who launch a grassroots unionization campaign, and "Daughters," about four young girls preparing for the Daddy Daughter Dance — a program for incarcerated fathers. The directors for those films will attend screenings in person. The filmmakers behind "Mistress Dispeller," which follows a Chinese woman through an elaborate scheme to save her marriage, and "A New Kind of Wilderness," about a Norwegian farming family coping with a tragedy, will speak at screenings by Zoom.
The festival’s opening night selection is "Merchant Ivory," a look at the filmmakers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, whose professional and domestic partnership produced a series of literary costume-dramas — including "Howards End" and "A Room with a View" — that essentially became their own genre. Ivory will attend the screening with the film’s director, Stephen Soucy.
On Saturday, the festival's gala will honor filmmaker Michael Moore ("Roger & Me," "Fahrenheit 911") with its Pennebaker Career Achievement Award.
Tickets are $17-$30; all-access passes are $350. To purchase tickets and for more information, go to hamptonsdocfest.com.
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