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Business & Tech

Chamber Heads to Film Festival: "Bake Your Own Pie!"

Chamber of Commerce heads in East Hampton and Montauk rue the date change that coincides future Hamptons International Film Festivals with the already bustling Columbus Day weekend.

Local chamber of commerce heads were delighted to welcome the Hamptons International Film Festival over the weekend following the Columbus Day Holiday this year, as hotels, restaurants, and stores gleaned a bit of extra post-season cash from the crowds of moviegoers. But festival organizers were quick to point out they will not be extending the season for East Hampton’s resort economy in 2012, when Columbus Day weekend will not conflict with Yom Kippur, as it did this year.

Organizers abandoned the longstanding tradition of holding the movie festival - which celebrated its - the weekend after Columbus Day in 2009, hoping to increase ticket sales and draw a larger spotlight to the event.

The move worked, but at the same time has irked chamber heads who say that one of the since-forgotten intentions of hosting the festival was to lengthen the shoulder season for the area, increasing business on a what would normally be a quiet weekend.

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In Montauk, rooms are booked solid over Columbus Day weekend, when a fall chowder festival draws hordes of families to the hamlet.

This past weekend, “in terms of hotels there were just a few rooms left, if any, on Friday and Saturday,” said Laraine Creegan, head of the . “For the last two years, the weekend following the fall festival was generally down, but this weekend we were up because the film festival brought additional people. Maybe the film festival will reconsider,” she hoped.

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But Karen Arikian, the festival’s executive director, said the schedule change resulted in a decrease in ticket sales by “about 10 percent” in comparison to last year.  “We are very pleased with the results considering this year’s date change,” she said in an email message, but “we look forward to returning to the Columbus Day Weekend for our 20th anniversary in 2012.”

In the meantime, businesses were happy to reap the benefits in this year’s reprieve.

“In general in the village there were a lot of people floating around, which is really nice to see,” said Marina Van, the executive director of the . “We were thrilled that it wasn’t Columbus Day weekend, because we really need the money on two weekends,” she said.

“I would never want to lose the festival,” she said, but, “we’ve baked the pie for the holiday and the festival comes in and eats out of it, instead of making their own pie.”

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