Hamptons Doc Fest: Jacqui Lofaro Gives a Lineup Rundown

This year marks the 17th annual Hamptons Doc Fest in Sag Harbor and from December 5 to 11, a total of 32 documentaries (feature length and shorts) will be screened at two venues — Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater. The festival schedule is designed so that it doesn’t compete against itself — meaning that marathon film goers could theoretically see every single movie on offer during the week.

It’s a lot to manage, but at this point Jacqui Lofaro, the festival’s founder and executive director, is calm, cool and collected (at least on the outside) and appears to have it all down to a science.

“We’re really cooking,” Lofaro said. “We’ve gotten some nice grants and operating on all the burners to make it work.”

Fans might remember that in its earliest years, the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, as it was originally called, focused on breathing new life into older documentaries made primarily by East End residents. These were films that had been overlooked or had minimal exposure the first time around. But as digital access improved, the focus expanded (as did the offerings) and in 2018, the festival was renamed the Hamptons Doc Fest.

“We changed it because we wanted to incorporate international films as opposed to just local films,” Lofaro explained. “Then it grew in terms of days. Once I was able to flesh out a staff, it mushroomed into a more robust film list. We opened up submissions on Film Freeway and [artistic director] Karen Arikian has a lot to do with finding many of these films.”

The newest addition to the Hamptons Doc Fest family is Gillian Coyne, who recently came onboard after working for the New York Wild Film Festival, which recently shuttered its doors.

“I know Nancy [Rosenthal], the founder, and she said she would close it down and said ‘Jacqui, if you need a good festival manager, I have one,’” Lofaro recalled. “Gillian is young, wonderful, proactive and loves film. She said film fests are niche businesses, and it’s true. You know within two seconds when something’s right. She was right.”

It also helps greatly that Coyne’s family has a home in Westhampton Beach.

“She gives me three or four days a week in person, so it’s really been really wonderful.”

The timing of the festival to run in early December — right after Thanksgiving — is by design and something Lofaro says audiences appreciate. Occurring before the major hustle and bustle of Christmas, she finds people are ready to get out of the house and take in the movies.

“It’s a week for yourself,” Lofaro said. “Treat yourself, come to the movies and spend a day or half a day. People love documentaries.”

And in terms of the documentaries showing at this year’s festival, there will be an impressive mix of both international and domestic offerings. Among them is “Mistress Dispeller,” a film by Hong Kong-born director Elizabeth Lo which the festival will screen in collaboration with Sag Harbor Cinema this Sunday, December 8, at 4:30 p.m.

Lo, who moved to the U.S. where she earned degrees from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and Stanford University, released her debut documentary, “Stray,” which followed the lives of three dogs living on the streets of Istanbul, in 2020.

In “Mistress Dispeller,” Lo looks at a most unusual occupation that is designed to preserve fractured marriages.

“It takes place in China, where they don’t have divorce attorneys, they have mistress dispellers,” explained Lofaro. “So if there is trouble in the marriage, the woman hires a mistress dispeller because she suspects her husband is having an affair — and he often is.

“The access she had is extraordinary,” added Lofaro of Lo’s film. “How did these people let her film them? There are very intimate sessions, including a therapy session where the wife and the mistress confront one another.”

When asked if she sees trends in the submitted films from year to year based on what’s happening in the wider world, Lofaro confirms that there sometimes are obvious themes that pop up at certain festivals. For example, a few years ago COVID-19 documentaries dominated the lineup. But in general, the film topics can run the gamut.

“There isn’t an overarching theme. We’re not a thematic festival, so the world is wide open,” Lofaro said. “There are always social justice films. This year, two of them are ‘Union’ and ‘The Battle for Laikipia.’”

Directed by Brett Story and Stephen Maing, “Union” chronicles the efforts of an unlikely group of Amazon warehouse employees who, under the leadership of an unassuming worker named Chris Small, launch a grassroots union campaign at a Staten Island fulfillment center. With a GoFundMe budget of $120,000, the workers start the Amazon Labor Union and embark on a journey against one of the most powerful companies in the world.

Conversely, “The Battle for Laikipia,” a film directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi, delves into the issues of historical injustice and climate change in a conflict between an Indigenous tribe and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven. In the face of increasing drought conditions, the migrating Samburu people, who follow the rains and the grass to raise their cattle, are struggling to find the pastureland they need. That puts them increasingly at odds with the white landowners and as resources dwindle, tensions and competition for the land rises.

Another film at this year’s Doc Fest is “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found.” Directed by Raoul Peck, the documentary tells the story of Black South African photographer Ernest Cole who documented the horror of apartheid in his photographs. As an exile to the United States, he found that racism was also alive and well here. Cole died in New York in 1990 at the age of 49, but more than 60,000 negatives of his lost work were found in 2017 in a Swedish bank vault.

“Our audience does like bio docs. They like to get a the behind the scenes look at things,” Lofaro said. “They like stories of people who are motived to change the world. If you’re knocked down, you can stay there or start a little revolution of your own.

“Those are the stories that really make good documentaries, because they have that passion in them that radiates out, so it’s all the way through.”

For its opening night film on December 5, Hamptons Doc Fest will pay tribute to the legendary filmmaking team of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant with Stephen Soucy’s “Merchant Ivory.” Lofaro notes that the documentary was originally scheduled to screen at Sag Harbor Cinema where the festival has booked theater two, but because of the demand, the screening has been relocated to Bay Street Theater, which can accommodate larger audiences.

“Last year, James directed a film called ‘A Cooler Climate,’ where he finds a box of stuff he shot 60 years ago in Afghanistan in 1960 and he makes this documentary about that,” Lofaro said, adding that the film was screened at the 2023 Hamptons Doc Fest. “The footage is exquisite and in black and white. James came out to Sag Harbor for that. He was 95 and stayed for three days. He loved it. He will come again this year.”

Another film from this year’s schedule that Lofaro particularly likes is the Norwegian documentary “A New Kind of Wilderness,” by Silje Evensmo Jacobsen which screens at Bay Street Theater on Monday.

“It’s the touching story of a family living off the grid. The kids write poetry, collect rocks and feathers,” Lofaro explained. “All of a sudden, mommy gets cancer and dies. The father is left trying to support three kids. He has to sell the farm and move to where he gets a job and the kids have to be enrolled in school. The kids are so unhappy. They stop being these wonderful, free spirits they were when they had this other life. The kids eventually fall in line, but does that mean you have to lose your focus on creativity and passion?

“It’s a very powerful message,” she added. “The world of conformity keeps the machinery of commerce going — at a price.”

Also recommended by Lofaro is Jeremy Xido’s “The Bones,” the festival’s closing night film at Bay Street Theater on Wednesday, December 11, at 7 p.m. From the Gobi Desert to the floor of a Paris auction house, “The Bones” follows paleontologists on a quest to unearth dinosaur fossils that may hold the key to saving humanity from extinction. But the bones are disappearing into the hands of fossil dealers who make millions selling them on the open market. Director Jeremy Xido will take part in a Zoom Q&A after the screening.

“I didn’t know there was such a black market in archeological finds. I knew about Egyptian objects, but not bones,” said Lofaro. “To me, it’s about commerce — the value of things in a black market and the cultural theme of not having them in a museum. It’s an interesting take. You think of dinosaurs and our experience of them is in museums. You don’t usually see them in people’s homes.”

Another documentary worth considering is Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Música!” which screens at Sag Harbor Cinema this Thursday at 5:30 p.m. and will receive the festival’s Art & Inspiration Award. The film is about a school in Cuba where the music students are forced to perform on instruments that are broken and worn out.

“A group of Americans volunteer to repair the instruments and bring them to New Orleans,” Lofaro said. “Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who won an Oscar for ‘The Times of Harvey Milk,’ are top directors and they’re coming out to do the Q&A. They will also be doing the Q&A for James Ivory. They directed ‘Common Threads,’ which won the 1990 Academy Award. We’re thrilled they’re coming.”

A new festival feature that premiered last year, “Shorts & Breakfast Bites,” proved so popular with audiences it is returning for 2024. Presented at Bay Street Theater on Saturday and Sunday morning, December 7 and 8, included in the ticket price is a spread of bagels, coffee, tea and pastries. Doors open for breakfast at 9:30 a.m. and the film shorts begin at 10 a.m. A new addition to the program is Hometown Heroes,” a student film competition. The first prize film will be screened at the Sunday morning breakfast program.

Finally, this year’s Hamptons Doc Fest gala on December 7 at Bay Street Theater will honor documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who will receive the festival’s Pennebaker Career Achievement Award. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. this Saturday with cocktails and a buffet, followed by an 8 p.m. screening of Moore’s 1989 documentary “Roger & Me” which chronicles the economic impact of General Motors’ closure of auto plants in Flint, Michigan, Moore’s hometown. An outspoken activist on issues of social and political importance, Moore’s long career includes 13 films, as well as acting in four films, producing three television series and publishing eight books.

“We had an advisory board meeting where we discussed the honorees. Interestingly enough, across the board everyone liked Michael Moore. ‘Roger & Me’ is 35 years old. He was one of the first to do a documentary in that manner — going up to confront the subject in a bold, proactive way. We thought it was the time we honored him. He’s coming out for the gala and it will be exciting to hear him speak.”

The 17th Hamptons Doc Fest runs December 5 to 11 at the Sag Harbor Cinema, 90 Main Street, and the Bay Street Theater on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor. For the complete film schedule, tickets and festival passes, visit hamptonsdocfest.com.