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Arts & Entertainment

Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, Opening Night, Nov.18

The fourth annual Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, scheduled this year for the weekend of November 18-20, opens on Friday, November 18, 5:30-9:30 p.m., with a gala at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

“At this opening night, we are paying tribute to pioneering filmmaker Richard Leacock, one of the giants in the documentary field, who passed away this past March in Paris at the age of 89,” said HT2FF founder and executive director Jacqui Lofaro of Bridgehampton, who is a documentary filmmaker herself.

After a reception from 5:30-7 p.m., with cuisine catered by Gurney’s Inn and wines from Channing Daughters Vineyards, legendary documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker will speak and introduce two Leacock films—“Happy Mother’s Day" (1963, 26 min.), a film about the frenzy surrounding the birth of the Fischer quintuplets in South Dakota, on which he collaborated with Leacock, and “Crisis” (1963, 52 min.), which captured the showdown between President John F. Kennedy and Alabama Governor George Wallace over school integration.

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Other well-known Leacock films are “Primary” (1960), filmed with Pennebaker and Albert Maysles (“Grey Gardens”), that followed John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey through the Democratic primary in Wisconsin, and “A Stravinsky Portrait” (1965) about the composer Igor Stravinsky, also filmed with Pennebaker.

The documentaries illustrate Leacock’s direct cinema style, which followed his guiding principle of “being there,” which meant, he said, “no interviews, no narration, no set-up shots, no tripods, no lights, no added sound. Don’t impose, don’t interfere.”

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Following the screenings, a panel composed of Pennebaker, along with filmmakers Victoria Leacock Hoffman and Robert Leacock—his daughter and son, both with East End ties—and Pam Wise, will discuss Leacock’s legacy.

Tickets for the Leacock gala are $75 and are available at www.HT2FF or at the door.

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