Film

Allen O’Reilly, Bay Street Theater’s director of education and community outreach, appears in a new film, “The Enormity of Life,” which will have its worldwide release on Tuesday, April 6.

A documentary screened at Hamptons Doc Fest’s virtual film festival in December is one of five Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature, as named on Monday, March 15, by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The film, “The Mole Agent” directed by Maite Alberdi, was one of the offerings shown in the festival last December.

Films screened as part of last fall’s 28th Hamptons International Film Festival have garnered a total of 30 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture nominees “Nomadland,” “Minari” and “Sound of Metal,” which received six nominations each. “One Night in Miami” received three nominations, “Collective” received two (including Best Documentary Feature) and “Time” received one nomination.

Bay Street Theater and the Southampton African American Museum (SAAM) are teaming up for a special online presentation of “Martin Luther King Jr: A Personal Portrait” on Thursday, March 25, at 8 p.m. via Zoom. Following the screening, Emmy Award-winning cinematographer George Silano, who filmed the footage over the course of a week in December 1965, will join Brenda Simmons, the founder and executive director of SAAM, for a question-and-answer session.

As far as court cases go, “Juliana vs. The United States” was certainly unusual. The 2015 case was named for Oregon resident Kelsey Juliana, the oldest of 21 young plaintiffs from around the country who sued the federal government for its role in promoting the fossil fuel industry, thereby failing to protect their constitutional right to a stable climate. Their journey is documented in “Youth v Gov,” a new film by Montana-based filmmaker Christi Cooper that followed the children’s case as it made its way through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals more than a year ago.

As part of THAW FEST, the Hamptons Arts Network’s (HAN) series of March offerings by its 21 member arts institutions, Hamptons Doc Fest will be presenting the Romanian documentary “Acasa, My Home,” for five days, from Thursday, March 11 to Monday, March 15.

Until this long and COVID-y winter is finally over, you are cordially invited to an environmental film festival located right here on your own couch. And since there are so many great documentaries made about the planet, and you’re so busy (doing what exactly, I’m not sure), I’ve tried to select the best of the best.

Now through March 30, the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (WHBPAC) is hosting a bi-weekly Tuesday night movie series for patrons and staff to watch (and comment on) films as a group. The next film in the series on March 16, is Matthew Akers “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present,” a feature-length documentary that follows the artist as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life — a major retrospective of her work at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

When the newly refurbished Sag Harbor Cinema opens its doors, presumably sometime this spring, and patrons are finally able to settle into the comfortable, brand new seats for a state-of-the-art film experience in one of its three theaters, they just might encounter a familiar face running the place — especially if they have been regular customers of the nearby UPS Store. That’s because Thierry Balihuta, 33, who joined the staff last fall as the cinema’s manager, most recently managed the Sag Harbor UPS Store where he could be relied upon to help customers ship parcels, design brochures or produce marketing materials.

Over the next month, the Sag Harbor Cinema will transport audiences to new worlds — virtually speaking — in Brazil, India, Italy, Ukraine, Turkey and around the United States through its virtual cinema and weekly “Cinema Live” conversations.

Now through March 30, the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center is hosting a biweekly Tuesday night movie series for patrons and staff to watch — and comment — on films as a group. The next film in the series is Laura Greenfied’s “Generation Wealth,” a postcard from the edge of the American empire that captures a portrait of a materialistic, workaholic, image-obsessed culture, on March 2, at 8 p.m.

“Cinema Live,” conversations and new films hosted online by Sag Harbor Cinema, continues this Saturday, February 14, at 4:30 p.m. with a live discussion featuring writer John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” and co-author, with Wong Kar Wai, of “WKW: The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai” (Rizzoli, 2016).

On Friday, February 19, at 7 p.m., the Shelter Island Health and Wellness Alliance, along with the Shelter Island Public Library, will host “Son of the South: A Conversation with Robert Zellner,” a Zoom discussion. The program is the third in the Necessary Bridges online series the alliance has hosted.

In its effort to support the outstanding films nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the category of Best Documentary Feature, Hamptons Doc Fest will profile and promote the five documentary nominees, starting on March 15, after the Academy’s announcement of the Oscar finalists.

Tuesday nights are for bonding, if only in the virtual sense. At least, that’s the philosophy of the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (WHBPAC) which, now through March 30, is hosting a biweekly Tuesday night movie series for patrons and staff to watch (and comment) on films as a group.