FALL 4 NY 2005: HIFF - HAMPTONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Three hours from NYC and just a few minutes down the road if you have a place in the Hamptons, the 13th Annual Hamptons International Film Festival begins tomorrow and runs through Sunday.

It is quite a major mini festival for independent films, with (by my count) something like 70 or more films (most of them some kind of premiere), and dozens of special events, talks, and parties. Taking place over just 5 days, it's clearly impossible for any one person to do everything. Lots of simultaneous events: pick and choose!

Among the highlights are:

The opening event, Bee Season, based on the novel, with Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche;

The closing event, The Weatherman, with Nicholas Cage, Michael Caine, and Hope Davis (who will be participating in festival events);

The winner of the Sloan Foundation award for a feature length film that explores themes of science and technology, Kardia;

Many short films including student films;

A restored version of Liza With A "Z", a 1972 filmed concert directed by Bob Fosse (one of my favorite choreographer/directors);

A bunch of interesting documentaries, including Modify, about piercing, tattoos, and other body modifications, Muskrat Lovely, about unfamiliar "folk" competitions ("Miss Outdoors" and muskrat skinning), and Ballets Russes, which contains restored footage from the famous revolutions in ballet in the early 1900s;

Many independent and international films, including a section on Films of Conflict and Resolution in Competition, juried by Debra Winger, David Dinerstein, and Ruth Diskin;

A collection of children's films;

The Warrior Class, directed by Alan Hruska, a lawyer turned film maker and theatrical director (Hruska is scheduled to direct Waiting For Godot next month);

Tristram Shandy, directed by Michael Winterbottom, whose last film was 9 Songs;

Special events about film making and acting;

and

The Matador, with Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, and Hope Davis, one of the first films from the new Weinstein Company.

And this is just a brief sampling.