This year’s festival poster and program cover art features a photo from the film “Call Me Dancer.” The film, directed by professional ballet dancer Leslie Shampaine and Pip Gilmour was also selected for this year’s Hamptons Doc Fest Art & Inspiration Award. It is a joyful film about the power of dance, told through the story of a young street dancer Manish Chauhan in Mumbai, India. The film also features music by Indian singers and composers. Read More

“Our 2023 documentary program promises you the power and experience of quality storytelling that surprises us, makes us think and feel, and connects us with wider ideas and concepts,” Hamptons Doc Fest founder and executive director Jacqui Lofaro says. “Plus the festival provides us as always with a festive, celebratory opening to the holiday season.” Read More

A new Hamptons Doc Fest program — “Shorts & Breakfast Bites” — adds to the festival experience this year by pairing a well-curated program of short films with coffee or tea, bagels and other breakfast treats, all for the regular price of a $15 film ticket.

During the week-long festival, “Shorts & Breakfast Bites” takes place on both Saturday and Sunday mornings, December 2 and 3, at 10 a.m. at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater, with tickets available at hamptonsdocfest.com. Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest celebrates its 16th year with an enlarged seven-day festival of 30 enlightening documentary films, screening November 30 to December 6 in Sag Harbor, at both the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater.

“Our 2023 documentary program promises you the power and experience of quality storytelling that surprises us, makes us think and feel, and connects us with wider ideas and concepts,” says Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest. “Plus the festival provides us as always with a festive, celebratory opening to the holiday season.” Read More

“Our 2023 documentary program promises you the power and experience of quality storytelling that surprises us, makes us think and feel, and connects us with wider ideas and concepts,” says Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest. “Plus the festival provides us as always with a festive, celebratory opening to the holiday season.”

The Opening Night Film at Sag Harbor Cinema on November 30, will feature director James Lapine’s “In the Company of Rose” about the life of Rose Styron, widow of novelist William Styron, while Frank Marshall’s “Rather” about CBS newscaster Dan Rather closes the festival at Bay Street Theater on December 6. Read More

Documentary lovers rejoice! The Hamptons Doc Fest returns to Sag Harbor next week. Now marking its 16th incarnation, the festival will present 30 films over seven days in two different theaters — the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater.

Jacqui Lofaro, executive director of the Hamptons Doc Fest, notes that the two-theater format has turned out to be a winner for the event. The festival is also longer this year — running seven days rather than six — giving programmers the opportunity to spread things out a bit. Read More

The 16th annual Hamptons Doc Fest returns for 2023 next Thursday, November 30 with a new and expanded slate of films showing through Wednesday, December 6 at Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

Longtime Hamptons Doc Fest Artistic Director Karen Arikian recently chatted with Dan’s Papers about how the festival has grown and changed, the current state of the documentary film industry, and what exciting movies attendees will get to enjoy in Sag Harbor this year. Read More

Opening Night Film at the Sag Harbor Cinema on November 30 features “In the Company of Rose” directed by James Lapine, about widow Rose Styron’s life with novelist William Styron, while Frank Marshall’s “Rather” about newscaster Dan Rather closes the festival at Bay Street Theater on December 6.

The line-up includes films about artists, musicians, dancers, fashion and photography, nature and the environment, biography, history and human rights. Read More

The festival's Pennebaker Career Achievement Award, first presented in 2011 to Richard Leacock, will be given to Matthew Heineman on Saturday by Lana Jokel, a filmmaker and the award's sponsor, and Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker's partner and co-filmmaker.

Mr. Heineman is an Academy Award-nominated and nine-time Emmy Award-winning director, whose subjects have included the war in Afghanistan ("Retrograde"), the drug war in Mexico ("Cartel Land"), ISIS in Syria ("City of Ghosts"), and Covid ("The First Wave"). Read More

California’s San Quentin State Prison isn’t the sort of place where you’d expect to find much in the way of optimism. But, as a new film screening at the Hamptons Doc Fest reveals, thanks to a running club overseen by a group of dedicated volunteers, serving a life sentence in prison doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the line. In fact, in many cases, it’s often just the starting point.

Christine Yoo’s documentary “26.2 to Life” shares the story of a group of San Quentin inmates — all of them serving long sentences — who find camaraderie, solace and hope for the future through a simple, yet thoroughly character-building, activity — running. Read More

This year’s Hamptons Doc Fest will once again masterfully capture the breadth of human experience in a series of 30 films shown over the course of seven days at the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater beginning Nov. 30.

The films cover a broad range of topical ground, from the masterful telling of the story of an accomplished composer and his wife as she struggles with cancer to the story of the first group of Jewish girls sent to work at Auschwitz, to investigative reporting on the ravaging of the seabed and a look back at the news throughout the 20th Century with veteran broadcaster Dan Rather. Read More

The Hamptons Doc Fest is turning sweet 16 by expanding to a full week while featuring a lineup that will include the stories of veteran newsman Dan Rather and musician Jon Batiste and an interview with Oscar-winning director James Ivory.

The festival, which begin Thursday and runs through Dec. 6, will take place at two Sag Harbor locations: Bay Street Theater and Sag Harbor Cinema. Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest, in partnership with the Southampton Arts Center, inaugurates spring with its annual Docs Equinox celebration that this year spotlights “All in for the Aquifer.”

Docs Equinox will feature three days of live programming, a keynote speaker, three dramatic documentary films followed by panel discussions, a welcoming cocktail reception, special “Water Central” information hub highlighting local environmental groups and more, April 14 through April 16, at the Southampton Arts Center on Jobs Lane. Read More

In collaboration with Hamptons Doc Fest, Southampton Arts Center will present Docs Equinox, a three-film series, April 14 through April 16, in celebration of Earth Month. Read More

In the lead up to Earth Day this year, Hamptons Doc Fest is presenting a special Docs Equinox program focused on the environment, specifically one of our most important resources — water. Along with a trio of documentary films demonstrating our aquifer’s tenuous situation, the three-day weekend, from April 14–16, is bringing together five local environmental nonprofits to discuss, inform and educate event-goers about our tap water and where it originates. Read More

Maya K. van Rossum, the leading figure nationally behind the Green Amendment, a constitutional amendment declaring “that each person shall have a right to clean air and water and a healthful environment,” came to Southampton to give a keynote address at a three day “Docs Equinox” celebration dedicated to the week of Earth Day. Read More

Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest, which just celebrated its 15th year, December 1 to 6, with 25 screenings at the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater. Read More

East Enders have become accustomed to seeing Lyme disease as a distinctly local issue, due to the area’s high concentration of Lyme patients and its proximity to the place the disease was first documented in the mid-1970s. Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest celebrates its 15th year with a live, six-day festival of 25 engaging, impactful documentary films, screening December 1 to 6 in Sag Harbor, at both the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater. Read More

The Hamptons Doc Fest celebrates its 15th anniversary this weekend with a lineup of 25 films and mostly in-person appearances by some of the best-known filmmakers in the documentary field.  The festival runs from Dec. 1 through Dec. 6 at the Sag Harbor Cinema and the Bay Street Theater, also in Sag Harbor. Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest will celebrate its 15th anniversary with a six-day program of 25 documentaries, starting Thursday at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor and the Sag Harbor Cinema. A highlight will be the presentation of the Pennebaker Career Achievement Award to Sam Pollard on Saturday evening, by the filmmaker Lana Jokel, the award's sponsor, and Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker's partner and co-director. Read More

The Hamptons Doc Fest returns to the Hamptons for its 15th annual event December 1–6, with a staggering lineup of documentary screenings at Bay Street Theater and Sag Harbor Cinema. We spoke with the festival’s founder and executive director, Jacqui Lofaro, about the 2022 celebration of documentary filmmaking and the road that brought her and the Hamptons Doc Fest to this milestone year. Read More

The stories sound totally invented, like something out of a comedic novel or a farcical movie. A secretary is asked to sew up a rip in her supervisor’s trousers, even though he’s still wearing them. Another is fired by her boss for daring to bring in a corned beef sandwich on white for lunch, instead of putting it on rye. Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest has announced that four of the 25 films screened during the 15th annual festival, which ran December 1 to 6 at Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street... Read More

Among the more than 25 intriguing documentaries that will be screened this weekend as part of the Hamptons Doc Fest (HDF) will be one that explores the timeless relationship of man and beast — specifically, one man, Patrick Dykstra, and one beast, Dolores. Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest and Southampton Arts Center will present a special sneak preview of “Attica,” from SHOWTIME Documentary Films on Sunday, October 17, at 5 PM. The powerful new documentary film directed and produced by Emmy Award winner Stanley Nelson, co-directed and produced by Traci Curry, and written by Nelson, recounts the tragic Attica prison uprising of September 9 to 13, 1971. Read More

By Annette Hinkle
Marking the rebellion’s 50th anniversary, the film highlights, how on September 9, 1971, more than 1,200 inmates in the upstate New York State maximum security prison, protesting living conditions, took control of the prison yard and held 39 prison guards hostage over four days, summoning public figures to serve as mediators. Read More

People either loved or hated the 1986 World Series Champion New York Mets, there was no in between.
It’s the polarizing nature of that Mets team that will be featured in ESPN’s latest 30 for 30 docuseries, “Once Upon A Time In Queens,” which the Hamptons Doc Fest will co-present with the Southampton Arts Center this Friday, September 10, in a special, free outdoor screening Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest and the Southampton Arts Center are presenting a special screening of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978) - which Rolling Stone Magazine lauded as "the single greatest concert movie of all time" - on Sunday, June 27. The screening will be preceded by a live performance of the band JL Rolls the Dice. Read more

Hamptons Doc Fest is celebrating Mother's Day by launching a virtual screening of Her Name Is Chef, a new documentary that explores changing gender roles in restaurant kitchens and the struggle women face rising to the title of Chef. The film will be available to view via the Doc Fest website from Sunday, May 9 through Sunday, May 23. Read More

Celebrate Earth Day with Hamptons Doc Fest’s Doc Equinox.
Playing with Sharks captures the life of Valerie Taylor, a fearless diver, cinematographer and pioneering conservationist whose work would forever change the world’s understanding of the ocean’s most magnificent apex predators. Read More

Jacqui Lofaro Talks Hamptons Doc Fest’s Docs Equinox
"It's our annual spring film series, which we label Docs Equinox. Our first one was about five years ago. It was our way of celebrating Earth Day with some environmental films. It is something that is near and dear to us.” Read More

Hamptons Doc Fest Presents Earth Day Docs Equinox April 22-25
The festival is celebrating Earth Day in a big way this year with three highly illuminating environmental films that shed a clear light on the human connection to our planet. Read more

Hamptons Art Network’s 2021 THAW Fest To Feature Virtual Screenings, Workshops, Concerts and much more.
While the majority of the 4th Annual THAW Fest will take place digitally, the month-long Hamptons Art Network festival is still offering a wide array of engaging, entertaining events. Read More

Frederick Wiseman’s documentary films offer an unparalleled, panoramic vision of society. He was the recipient of The Hamptons Doc Fest Career Achievement Award this year and his 45th feature, “City Hall,” screened at our all virtual festival. Read article

Islanders who’ve grown accustomed to hunkering down during the pandemic and now the onset of cold weather have the opportunity to enjoy one of the South Fork’s favorite film festivals without even venturing onto the ferry. The 13th annual Hamptons Doc Fest has announced that this year’s festival will all be online, expanded from five to 10 days, with a full slate of 35 documentaries running Dec. 4-13. Read More

This year’s Hamptons Doc Fest, launching Friday, Dec. 4, had planned an expanded program at multiple cinemas, but it will instead present a slate of 28 features and seven shorts virtually, over a 10-day period. Now in its 13th year, the festival will, as always, present a diverse lineup of documentaries covering politics, history, science, biography, social justice, the environment, and the arts. Read More

The Hamptons Doc Fest is pleased to announce the full film slate for its 13th year, expanded from 5 days to 10 days and running online December 4-13. The festival will kick off its virtual run on Friday, December 4th at 7pm EST with Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI. Just because movie theaters and other venues aren’t open to their full capacity, or at all, doesn’t mean that we can’t still enjoy what we love. Read more

The festival’s 13th edition will run Dec. 4-13 online and will include a tribute to Frederick Wiseman, this year’s recipient of the D.A. Pennebaker Award for excellence over a career in documentary filmmaking. Wiseman’s latest documentary, "City Hall," will screen as part of the festival. Read More

Documentary Recalls Two Legendary Newspaper Columnists

“Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists” (2018, 106 min.) follows the lives, triumphs and tragedies, and five-decade careers of two brilliant, gritty and controversial New York City newspaper columnists — Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill — in the great era of print journalism, writing for the New York Herald Tribune, Daily News, New York Post and Newsday. Read More

Knoedler's Art Forgery Scandal on Film by Mark Segal

Since the start of the shutdown, the Fest Fave series of HDF has been making memorable documentaries and interviews with filmmakers available for online viewing. New this week is “Driven to Abstraction,” Daria Price’s documentary about the $80 million forgery scandal that stunned the art world and led to the collapse of Knoedler & Co., which had operated in Manhattan since 1846. Read More

Driven To Abstraction: Documentary Explores The Opaque World Of The High End Art Market by Annette Hinkle
The murky realm of shady art deals is the subject of “Driven to Abstraction,” Daria Price’s documentary was screened last December as part of the Hamptons Doc Fest, and beginning Sept. 2, will also be available on the festival’s website, along with a video of the Q&A with Price that followed the screening. Read more

Mid-week Cinema Treat by Annette Hinkle
The newest film to join the lineup on May 6, is Stanley Nelson’s “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.” The film covers the rise and fall of the black nationalist organization and was screened as part of the 2015 festival where Nelson received the festival’s Career Achievement Award. Read more

Hamptons Doc Fest Debuts Weekly "Fest Favorite" Series
Hamptons Doc Fest's new series will offer a virtual mid-week treat for all.  "We plan to stay connected to our documentary fans no matter what," Jacqui Lofaro, Hamptons Doc Fest Executive Director, shared.  Read more

Hamptons Doc Fest offering free online viewing of past selections. The Hamptons Doc Fest has arranged for free online viewing of one of its past selections, “Penny and Red: The Life of Secretariat’s Owner.” We want to stay connected to our fans, Lofaro said. Read more

Filmmaker Susan Lacy Takes On Fashion Icon Ralph Lauren In Documentary ‘Very Ralph’

Throughout her 30-plus year career in biographical filmmaking, one type of personality Susan Lacy had never before tackled was someone who worked in the fashion industry — until now. “Fashion is not the world I live in,” Lacy said, “particularly with someone like Ralph, who is not a designer who works the same way other designers work. Read More

Jacqui Lofaro On The 2019 Hamptons Doc Fest, The Many Local Ties Of This Year’s Festival, And More

The next big one that's really terrific is Gay Chorus Deep South and that's receiving the Sloan Shelton Human Rights Award. I've seen it now three or four times and I cry each time. It's about the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and they go on a tour to the American Deep South, because they decide what is the point of staying in San Francisco? Read More

Doc Fest Film Explores USA Gymnastics Scandal

In 2016, USA Gymnastics was rocked by the shocking revelation that national team doctor Larry Nassar had been abusing young athletes for decades. “At The Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal” is a documentary that reveals a dangerous system that prioritized winning over everything else, including protecting young female athletes. Read More

Gearing Up For The Doc Fest

“Selecting the very best docs for our 2019 program was both challenging and rewarding,” said festival founder and executive director Jacqui Lofaro. “With screen space for about 30 films, it’s always a mountain to climb to chose. We believe our festival picks are among the best and most compelling stories, many unique and untold, but each the spark for new thinking. Read More

Love Explored In Documentary Short

According to a press release, “‘What is Love?’ is a documentary about love and its many meanings. Love is a word we all use, but rarely stop and try to define. ‘What Is Love?’ asks this question of people from all walks of life, ages, sexualities, and cultures. They speak from the depths of years of experience, from the freshness of youth, from the battlegrounds and successes of love. Read More

‘Citizen K:’ The Richest Man In Russia

“Whether it’s Putin’s Russia, Enron, the war in Afghanistan, Julian Assange, Scientology, or the perils of Silicon Valley, Alex Gibney has tackled some of the most complex and most defining issues of our time with a unique blend of courage, depth, and limpidity,” D’Agnolo Vallan said. “His contribution to our understanding of the world around us is invaluable.” Read More

A Tribute To Penny

Hamptons Doc Fest honors Sag Harbor’s acclaimed cinéma vérité pioneer. DA Pennebaker, known by just about everyone local as Penny, lived his life through cinematography, and he and his wife created films that are still talked about today. The International Movie Database lists 63 director credits. Read More

Audrey Flack, Finally Seen

“Queen of Hearts” opens with Flack mounting a stepladder in faded cutoff shorts and bare feet, reaching up to apply paint to an oversize canvas filled with literal Ruben-esque figures and Superman and Supergirl flying above in a Baroque flourish. Read More

Hamptons DOC FEST 2019 Explores Truth in Cinema

Founder Jacqui Lofaro discusses this year's highlights and her passion for documentaries. Who doesn’t love a well-told story? nd nothing is more fascinating than a story that is true, based on facts, interviews and first-hand accounts. Truth is always stranger than fiction! Read More

What to see at this year's Hamptons Doc Fest.

Remember when documentaries were the last thing moviegoers wanted to see? Not anymore. Non-fiction films are booming in popularity, thanks to an increasing appetite for content about politics, current affairs, history and famous figures. Riding that wave locally is the Hamptons Doc Fest, now in its 12th year. Read More

DA Pennebaker, Trailblazing Filmmaker, Honored At Hamptons Doc Fest.
“For me, it’s honoring Penny’s groundbreaking contribution to moviemaking,” Hegedus said of the award. “He was part of a group of filmmakers that engineered the first sync-sound portable camera system that enabled you to follow the drama that was happening in real life, as it happens. Read More