THE ETERNAL MEMORY

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THE ETERNAL MEMORY

MON, 12/4, 3:00pm, 85 min BAY STREET THEATER

Director: Maite Alberdi
Producers: Maite Alberdi, Rocio Jadue, Juan de Dios Larrain, Pablo Larrain
Editor: Carolina Siraqyan
Cinematographer: Pablo Valdés

Augusto Góngora, a veteran Chilean political journalist, dedicated himself in the 1970s and 1980s to bringing the iniquities of the Pinochet regime to public attention and later to conserving that national memory for future generations. So it is somewhat ironic that now Góngora struggles with his own memory as he contends with the ravages of Alzheimer’s. What gives the film heart is the love story between Góngora and his devoted wife and caretaker, former Chilean culture minister Paulina Urrutia.

Maite Alberdi is a Chilean filmmaker. Her film The Mole Agent was an Academy Award nominee in 2021 for Best Documentary, among other honors. The Eternal Memory was selected in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize.

THE GULLSPÅNG MIRACLE

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THE GULLSPÅNG MIRACLE

FRI, 12/1, 12:00, 108 min BAY STREET THEATER

Director Maria Fredriksson via Zoom for Q&A

Director: Maria Fredriksson
Producer: Ina Holmqvist
Editors: Orvar Anklew, Mark Bukdahl
Cinematographer: Pia Lehto

When May is injured in a freak accident on a rollercoaster ride, she and her sister Kari decide to buy a home in the small Swedish town of Gullspång. But when the siblings encounter the property’s seller, Olaug, they become convinced that she is their older sibling, Lita, who allegedly committed suicide some 30 years earlier.

It is at this point that documentary filmmaker Maria Fredriksson, at the behest of the sisters, begins to investigate this strange history. Gradually, she pieces together a domestic jigsaw puzzle, resulting in a true-crime family drama that journeys down a series of surprising paths.

Fredriksson is one of the founders of the all-female production company Ballad Film. She has made several short documentaries that have screened at international film festivals. The Gullspång Miracle is her first feature documentary.

THE LOVING STORY

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THE LOVING STORY

SUN, 12/3, 2:00pm, 77 min, follows the Legacy Award presentation, SAG HARBOR CINEMA

Director: Nancy Buirski
Producers: Nancy Buirski, Elisabeth Haviland James
Editor: Elisabeth Haviland James
Cinematographers: Rex Miller, Steve Milligan

The Loving Story is an unusual telling of a civil rights story. Though often overlooked among the pantheon of civil rights struggles, Mildred and Richard Lovings’ quest to live together as husband and wife in the state of Virginia was a pivotal one. A white man and a part-black, part-Rappahannock woman were in love and did not understand why their marriage was a criminal offense in the eyes of the state. Their effort to not live in shame or in exile is universal, metaphorically reminding us of oppressed and exiled people everywhere. The Lovings are paired with two young and ambitious lawyers who are driven to pave the way for Civil Rights and social justice through an historic Supreme Court ruling, changing the country's story forever and making anti-miscegenation laws illegal.

The film won numerous awards including in 2013 the George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming. The Chicago Sun-Times said of the film, “Documenting many pivotal moments in the case, it adds a dash of something rarely seen in the grand narrative of the American Civil Rights struggle: romance.”

Nancy Buirski wrote, directed and produced many award winning films, among them A Crime on the Bayou and The Rape of Recy Taylor which completed the cycle on racial justice films she began with The Loving Story; By Sidney Lumet and Afternoon of a Faun, both for American Masters; and her last feature documentary, Desperate Souls, Dark City and The Legend of Midnight Cowboy.

YOUNG VOICES PROGRAM STUDENTS, FACULTY & FAMILY ONLY

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YOUNG VOICES PROGRAM

FOR STUDENTS, FACULTY & FAMILY ONLY

WED, 12/6, 10:00am BAY STREET THEATER

The Hamptons Doc Fest highlights a special program dedicated exclusively to our community youth in middle and high schools. The short film Rocks 4 Sale! will be screened. The program bonus: Roger Sherman, award-winning filmmaker will conduct a hands-on workshop on how to make a movie with a smartphone.

Our YOUNG VOICES program has hosted hundreds of students who filled the theater to watch curated films and to better understand the language of film within a context of art, history and society. The YOUNG VOICES program at the festival expands on this theatrical viewing experience with a hands-on orientation workshop in filmmaking, with a focus on the professional development of young filmmakers.

Young Voices is sponsored, in part, by NYU Langone and National Grid.