Columbus Day Weekend is shaping up to be a wild one on the East End of Long Island. The Hamptons International Film Festival is a big mover and shaker this weekend, occupying East Hampton, Sag Harbor and Southampton with film screenings and events. Still, the film festival isn't the only game in town for fun and cultural events over the weekend. Read on to discover our picks for some of the best things to do over Columbus Day Weekend in The Hamptons and on the East End.
Hamptons International Film Festival Takes Center Stage
Courtesy of the Hamptons International Film Festival.
Opening today (Thursday) and continuing through Monday, the Hamptons International Film Festival returns for its 24th year of celebrating independent films and promoting different voices and perspectives in the film industry. This year’s HIFF presents over 120 films from 33 countries as well as informative talks, panel discussions, and, of course, parties.
Offerings on the big screen cover a broad range of films from cutting-edge indie efforts, World Cinema,“Films of Conflict & Resolution” and “Views from Long Island” to “Compassion, Justice and Animal Rights” and environmental awareness in HIFF’s new “Air, Land and Sea” section, among others. The 2016 festival also boasts five foreign films that have already been selected by their respective countries as the 2016 entry into the Oscar® race for Best Foreign Language Film.
Interviews and panels include the perennially popular “Conversation With . . .” program, which this year will feature three individual interviews with actors Holly Hunter, Edward Norton and Aaron Eckhart. The 2016 film fest will also present the annual Variety 10 Actors to Watch class of up-and-coming stars with “uncommonly bright futures.”
For a complete rundown on screenings, programming, venues and purchasing tickets, visit www.hamptonsfilmfest.org.
Art Exhibitions Bound to Cause a Stir
Columbus Day Weekend is a wild one for art in The Hamptons. Patron Host moves into Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor to present an Art + Music Lounge designed to give film festival goers and creatives a place to relax, hear live music, take in a photographer book signing and check out the art show with contemporary artists to notice. Art + Music Lounge opens tonight (Thursday) and continues as a drop-in center for the creative arts through Monday. Click here for details. Across the street, RJD Gallery is also a place to be...especially on Saturday night when the group exhibition "Women Painting Women" has its Opening Reception. The majority of the 20 or so featured artists are expected to be in attendance so the reception is bound to be a wild one. Click here for a preview of what to expect at RJD.
In East Hampton, Roman Fine Art opens its doors for the first time in the former Vered Gallery location, which recently closed its doors to reconfigure into Janet Lehr Inc, according to gallerist Damien Roman, a former associate of Vered Gallery. The reorganization has Janet Lehr Inc. in one half of former Vered Gallery and Roman Fine Art in the other. The Opening Reception on Saturday night from 6 to 8 p.m. provides a great opportunity to take in the contemporary art offered by Roman Fine Art's program and see the new gallery. "Get With The Program I" includes exhibiting artists Ray Caesar, Eddie Colla, Tim Conlon, Gentleman's Game, GILF, Grant Haffner, JURNE, Elektra KB, SWOON, Mary Theinert and others. Click here for details.
Also in East Hampton, a bit of the Hudson art scene moves in for the weekend with a group show set in a private home as gallery backdrop. Gallery @ 46 Street Studios presents "Art Is Home: Hudson in the Hamptons" on Saturday and Sunday with live music receptions on both days. Expect painting, sculpture and mixed media in a glimpse of the vibrant art making community that's burgeoning in Hudson. Click here for details.
“Exquisite Corpse” Book Reading
Art critic and author Helen Harrison, who is also the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, will read from her new mystery, “An Exquisite Corpse: Death in Surrealist New York” at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor at 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 8, 2016.
Harrison’s novel follows a detective investigating the death of a Cuban painter who turns up dead in his 1940s Greenwich Village studio and suspicion falls on a group of Surrealist artists, refugees of a war-torn Europe. Helen Harrison is an author, an art critic who has written for the New York Times Long Island section, and has been a curator for the Parrish Art Museum. Her previous books include Hamptons Bohemia. More recently, she wrote the foreword for Dinner with Jackson Pollock. This is her first novel.
Canio’s Books is located at 290 Main Street, Sag Harbor, NY 11963. For more information, click here.
Wölffer Harvest Party
Wölffer Estate Vineyard is hosting its 2016 Harvest Party on Saturday, October 8, 2016 from noon to 5 p.m.
The party will be held at Wölffer Estate in Sagaponack, between the vines and on the lawn, according to the vineyard’s website. Partygoers will be able to enjoy Wölffer wines and ciders as well as such activities as barrel rolling, grape stomping and a wine-making relay race. There will also be food and family-friendly festivities like pony rides, a petting zoo and hayrides. The Lynn Blue Band will play live music.
New this year, partygoers have a chance of winning prizes in the Lederhosen and Dirndl Contest, for both children and adults in their best classic German attire. Attendees also have the possibility of winning a 3-liter bottle of Wölffer’s sold-out Summer in a Bottle Rosé, as everyone over the age of 21 is automatically entered in a raffle.
Tickets are $145 per person, or $125 for wine club members. Parents can buy tickets for their kids age 2 to 12 for $80. Rain date is Sunday, October 9. Wölffer Estate Vineyard is located at 139 Sagg Road, Sagaponack, NY 11962. For more information, click here.
Peek into the Past at the Shelter Island Historical Society
Last chance to check out the Shelter Island Historical Society exhibition, “Collective Identity: Photographs & Tintype Images from 1882 to 1915,” which closes on Saturday, October 8, 2016.
The one-week exhibition, on display at the Havens House Museum on Shelter Island, features tintype portraits of African-American, Native American and European immigrant Sag Harbor residents. Tintypes, also known as ferrotypes, are an early format of photography in which underexposed images were produced on a thin iron plate that took only a matter of minutes to make, according to the United Kingdom’s National Media Museum, making them more accessible to a larger class of people.
The exhibit is on view from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day, through Saturday, October 8. There is an $8 suggested donation for attendees. The Havens House Museum is located at 16 South Ferry Road, Shelter Island, NY 11964. Click here for more information.
End of Summer Symphony and Fireworks Show
Mark the transition from the end of summer to the beginning of fall with a bang at the “End of Summer Celebration” symphony and fireworks show at Brecknock Hall in Greenport on Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 6 p.m., with fireworks starting at 7:15 p.m.
The fifth annual free symphony and fireworks show is open to the public. Guests are encouraged to bring beach chairs and blankets. Rain date is Monday, October 10.
Brecknock Hall is located at 1 Brecknock Road, Greenport, NY 11944. For more information, email [email protected] or click here.
UPDATE: 10/09/16: Due to impending weather and expected high winds, the End of Summer Celebration has been cancelled.
"We are disappointed to have to cancel the show this year, but the weather just isn't on our side," said Robert J. Syron, President and CEO of Peconic Landing. "This is a highlight event for our community and one we look forward to each summer. We hope that everyone will join us next year to bring back this annual tradition."
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