January 2021
Japan's Official Submission to the Academy Awards
After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a child. Over the next six years, the middle-class couple and their young son Asato settle into a comfortable, albeit routine, life. The family’s orderly existence is shattered by the arrival of Hikari, a young woman claiming to be Asato’s biological mother, demanding his return. As tensions mount, Satoko grows more and more emboldened to defend her family.
Weaving together multiple timelines and genres with a contemplative pacing and keen sense of place, hallmarks of Kawase’s work, TRUE MOTHERS is “is a deeply touching celebration of women who assume duties of love, support and compassion” (Awards Watch).
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Ukraine's Official Submission to the Academy Awards
A prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival and Ukraine’s official selection for the 2021 Academy Awards, Atlantis is a gorgeous and visionary sci-fi drama. Eastern Ukraine, 2025. A desert unsuitable for human habitation. Water is a dear commodity brought by trucks. A Wall is being build-up on the border. Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to his new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming the past. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which they are also allowed to fall in love again.
Find Out MoreFebruary 2021
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Hunted by mysterious forces, a young woman who has supernatural abilities must go on the run when her powers are discovered. With nowhere else to go, she flees back to her family and the farmhouse she abandoned long ago. There, while being pursued by the local sheriff, she begins to mend the broken relationships with her mother and daughter and learns that the power she needed was inside her all along.
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France's Official Submission to the Academy Awards
Nina and Madeleine, two retired women, have been secretly deeply in love for decades. From everybody’s point of view, including Madeleine’s family, they are simply neighbors living on the top floor of their building. They come and go between their two apartments, sharing the tender delights of everyday life together. Until the day their relationship is turned upside down by an unexpected event leading Madeleine’s daughter to slowly unveil the truth about them.
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Virtual Cinema
What if we are living in a simulation, and the world as we know it is not real? To tackle this mind-bending idea, acclaimed filmmaker Rodney Ascher (ROOM 237, THE NIGHTMARE) uses a noted speech from Philip K. Dick to dive down the rabbit hole of science, philosophy, and conspiracy theory. Leaving no stone unturned in exploring the unprovable, the film uses contemporary cultural touchstones like THE MATRIX, interviews with real people shrouded in digital avatars, and a wide array of voices, expert and amateur alike. If simulation theory is not science fiction but fact, and life is a video game being played by some unknowable entity, then who are we, really? A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX attempts to find out.
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“Stuffed” is a documentary feature film about the surprising and unique world of taxidermy. Through the eyes and hands of passionate renowned artists across the world, the film allows the audience to dip into & explore this diverse subculture, where sculptors must also be scientists. It is a genre of art, formed by a collection of people who have a fanaticism for nature, matched only by their desire to protect it. They love animals and see life where others only see death. In an unexpected twist, “Stuffed” reveals the importance of preserving nature, using taxidermy as its unlikely vehicle, and the taxidermist as its wild driver.
Find Out MoreMarch 2021
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Lauren Greenfield’s postcard from the edge of the American Empire captures a portrait of a materialistic, workaholic, image-obsessed culture. Simultaneously autobiographical and historical essay, the film bears witness to the global boom-bust economy, the corrupted American Dream, and the personal costs of late stage capitalism, narcissism, and greed.
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Commissioned by Mastercard, the “FIVE” films – HARFA, JUSTICE OF THE PIES, ONGANIC FOODS, SARAH’S BAG, and TALENTO INCLUIR – follow five extraordinary women from five countries across the globe who have each set out to start a purpose-driven business to improve and uplift their communities. Witness their journey through food insecurity and sustainable farming to special education and diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
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When Leipzig pianist Kyra Steckeweh realized that her repertoire almost exclusively consisted of music composed by men, she began searching for pieces written by female composers. Her research in archives, libraries, and publishing houses quickly brought to light a variety of remarkable piano pieces that have been buried in history and rarely performed.. Steckeweh sees a lot of catching up to do, which is why the focus of her piano recitals and recordings has since shifted to the music of women composers, particularly Mel Bonis, Lili Boulanger and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. With these releases she has brought to our attention and delight three very different composers, all of whom left a diverse body of work. In addition to the in-depth examination of the music, Steckeweh, as a pianist and historian, seeks to look “behind the notes”: How did these women live? What barriers did they have to overcome and how did they manage to cope with the obstacles of their time? The film “Women Composers” highlights the historical and personal circumstances under which these three remarkable women created their works in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Virtual Cinema
After nearly a decade exploring different facets of the African diaspora — and his own place within it — Ephraim Asili makes his feature-length debut with The Inheritance, an astonishing ensemble work set almost entirely within a West Philadelphia house where a community of young, Black artists and activists form a collective. A scripted drama of characters attempting to work towards political consensus — based partly on Asili’s own experiences in a Black liberationist group — weaves with a documentary recollection of the Philadelphia liberation group MOVE, the victim of a notorious police bombing in 1985. Ceaselessly finding commonalties between politics, humor, and philosophy, with Black authors and radicals at its edges, The Inheritance is a remarkable film about the world as we know it.
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Morocco's Official Submission to the Academy Awards
Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually, however, Abla’s resolve softens and Samia’s arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life.
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This feature-length documentary film 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. To be given a retrospective at one of the world’s premiere museums is, for any living artist, the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more – it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: ‘But why is this art?’
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Virtual Cinema
In this intimate exploration of identity, trauma and power, a young woman seeks out her birth mother, inadvertently triggering a string of events which change both their lives.
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In this special docuseries filmed exclusively for Women’s History Month, discover who’s behind the curtain when WHBPAC volunteers share their stories of life and love. Without their tremendous generosity, we wouldn’t be able to give you the world-class performing arts experience that we pride ourselves on.
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A Suitable Girl follows three young women in India struggling to maintain their identities and follow their dreams amid intense pressure to get married. The film examines the women’s complex relationship with marriage, family, and society.
Find Out MoreApril 2021
Virtual Cinema
After toiling for years in bit-parts, aspiring actress Nina Wu (Ke-Xi Wu, who also co-wrote the script based on her own personal experiences) finally gets her big break with a leading role in a spy thriller set in the 1960s. The part, which calls for nudity and explicit sex scenes, is made all the more challenging thanks to the director’s unending belittlements. While seemingly on the brink of professional triumph, Nina’s psychological resolve begins to crack under the pressure. As she rushes to her childhood home following a family emergency, Nina begins suffering paranoid fantasies that a mysterious woman is stalking and attacking her. As Nina clings to memories of happier times, it seems that there is one crucial memory that she is repressing…
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Virtual Cinema
A poetic debut feature circling the origin of the death myth from the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, małni – towards the ocean, towards the shore follows two people as they wander through their surrounding nature, the spirit world, and something much deeper inside. At its center are Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier, who take separate paths contemplating their afterlife, rebirth, and death. Probing questions about humanity’s place on earth and other worlds, Sky Hopinka’s film will have audiences thinking (and dreaming) about it long after.
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For the 16th consecutive year, Shorts HD and Magnolia Pictures present the Oscar-Nominated Short Films, opening on April 2nd. With the WHBPAC screening the Live Action shorts in person, this is your annual chance to predict the winners (and have the edge in your Oscar pool)! A perennial hit with audiences around the country and the world, don’t miss this year’s selection of shorts. The Academy Awards take place Sunday, April 25th.
Find Out MoreMay 2021
As the world searches for a cure to a devastating virus, a scientist and a park scout venture deep into the woods. As night falls, their journey becomes a terrifying voyage through the heart of darkness as the forest comes to life around them.
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Virtual Cinema
In 1990, seven young male dancers – 6 gay,1 straight – joined Madonna on her most controversial tour. On stage and in the iconic film Truth or Dare, they showed the world how to express yourself. Now, 25 years later, they reveal the truth about life during and after the tour, when they were ambassadors to the world on behalf of the LGBT community during the height of the AIDS epidemic. STRIKE A POSE is a dramatic tale about overcoming shame and finding the courage to be who you are.
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ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is a reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality. We wander, dreamlike, gently guided by our Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments take on the same significance as historical events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe; a defeated army marches to a prisoner-of-war camp. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.
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Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns to his home town after an absence of over twenty years to attend the funeral of his childhood friend, Luke, who allegedly killed his wife and child before taking his own life – a victim of the madness that has ravaged this community after more than a decade of drought. When Falk reluctantly agrees to stay and investigate the crime, he opens up an old wound – the death of 17- year-old Ellie Deacon. Falk begins to suspect these two crimes, separated by decades, are connected. As he struggles to prove not only Luke’s innocence but also his own, Falk finds himself pitted against the prejudice towards him and and pent-up rage of a terrified community.
Find Out MoreJune 2021
Christian Petzold (PHOENIX, TRANSIT) boldly reimagines the ancient myth of Undine in this suspenseful tale of romance and betrayal in modern day Berlin. Undine (Paula Beer) works as a historian lecturing on Berlin’s urban development. But when the man she loves leaves her, the myth catches up with her. Undine has to kill the man who betrays her and return to the water. Will Undine defy fate when she meets a diver (Franz Rogowski) offering her a chance at new love?
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Beginning Tuesday, June 15, Andrew Botsford of Quogue will once again introduce our summer films each Tuesday night and discuss them afterward with guest commentators, followed by an informal audience discussion.
Most recently a visiting professor and communications consultant for the graduate arts program at Stony Brook Southampton, Andrew was for 20 years the associate editor of The Southampton Press and editor of its Arts & Living section and has written extensively about film, theatre, and the arts. The host of the annual Hamptons Doc Fest in Sag Harbor, he has been an actor, director and producer with the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue since 1985.
This is Andrew’s 15th year of hosting the WHBPAC summer film series.
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When Alexis capsizes off the coast of France, David comes to the rescue and opens his eyes to a new horizon of friendship, art and sexual bliss.
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FREE
Join us for a special Q&A and book signing of American Goddess: Jean Patchett by Robert & Lois Lilly. Immediately following the signing, we will be screening Funny Face, the 1957 classic starring Audrey Hepburn & Fred Astaire.
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When a proposed pipeline creates hostilities between residents of a small town, a newly-arrived forest ranger must keep the peace after a snowstorm confines the townspeople to an old lodge. But when a mysterious creature begins terrorizing the group, their worst tendencies and prejudices rise to the surface, and it is up to the ranger to keep the residents alive, both from each other and the monster which plagues them.
Find Out MoreJuly 2021
To the tight-knit community of Sainte-Adeline, Quebec, Magalie appears as a normal suburban high school sophomore surrounded by friends. But this popular teenage girl is harboring a shocking secret: she’s pregnant. When Magalie refuses to identify the father, suspicions among the townsfolk come to a boiling point and the layers of a carefully maintained social varnish eventually crack.
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FINAL ACCOUNT is an urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday people to participate in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Over a decade in the making, the film raises vital, timely questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilians in never-before-seen interviews reckon with — in very different ways — their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history.
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Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters is a feature documentary that traces the remarkable history and legacy of one of the most important works of art to come out of the age of AIDS –choreographer Bill T. Jones’s tour de force ballet “D-Man in the Waters.” In 1989, D-Man in the Waters gave physical manifestation to the fear, anger, grief, and hope for salvation that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company felt as they were embattled by the AIDS pandemic. As a group of young dancers reconstructs the dance, they learn about this oft forgotten history and deepen their understanding of the power of art in a time of plague.
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When simple-minded friends Jean-Gab and Manu find a giant fly trapped in the boot of a car, they decide to train it in the hope of making a ton of cash.
Find Out MoreAugust 2021
SUMMERTIME follows the intersecting stories of 27 youth spoken word poets over a single day in Los Angeles. The director’s ground-breaking vision began at a poetry showcase where performers from across the City of Angels recited fearlessly personal texts about themselves, their communities, and their relationship to their city. The project was then developed around their individual poems and interwoven into a larger, unified, and gloriously moving narrative experiment — part contemporary musical and part sociological art. SUMMERTIME explores themes of identity, community, and intersectionality through the unique perspectives of this diverse ensemble.
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Retired hairdresser Pat Pitsenbarger (Udo Kier) has given up on life from the confines of his small-town Sandusky, Ohio nursing home. But when Pat gets word that a former client’s dying wish was for Pat to style her final hairdo, he sets out on an epic journey across Sandusky to confront the ghosts of his past–and collect the beauty supplies necessary for the job. SWAN SONG is a comical and bittersweet journey about rediscovering oneself, and looking gorgeous while doing so.
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Ema and Gastón are a young couple who adopted Polo, a young boy. However, they are unable to raise him and give him back. The couple must deal with the aftermath of the failed adoption as their household falls apart.
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Directed by Dash Shaw 95 Mins | English | NR Cryptozoo is a hand drawn, gritty and fantastical parable about society versus the individual. A zoo that rescues mythological creatures in psychedelic 1960’s San Francisco races the U.S. Military to find and save a Baku, a Japanese dream-eating cryptid, to prevent the military from…
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In the late 80s and early 90s, the streets of downtown Manhattan were the site of a collision between two vibrant subcultures: skateboarding and hip hop. Narrated by Zoo York co-founder Eli Gesner with an original score by legendary hip-hop producer Large Professor (Nas, A Tribe Called Quest), All the Streets Are Silent brings to life the magic of the time period and the convergence that created a style and visual language that would have an outsized and enduring cultural effect. From the DJ booths and dance floors of the Mars nightclub to the founding of brands like Supreme, this convergence would lay the foundation for modern street style. Paris Is Burning meets Larry Clark’s KIDS, All the Streets Are Silent is a love letter to New York–examining race, society, fashion, and street culture.
Find Out MoreSeptember 2021
Please join us for the kickoff screening of The Soul of A Farmer, a benefit for Early Girl Farm. The documentary follows the farm’s owner, Patty Gentry, a former chef, as she battles the elements on her three acres in Bellport, Long Island.
As actor Isabella Rossellini, Patty’s landlord, tells us in the film: “Patty is the Picasso of vegetables!”
The film upends the romance of farm-to-table. Sure, buying fresh produce at farmers markets and farmstands is wonderful. But the farmer’s life is a constant struggle. We watch Patty work her butt off (with her small, mostly female team) seven days a week, growing the vegetables her top chef clients treasure. Such clients as Missy Robbins of Lilia, and Misi; Andrew Tarlow of Marlow & Sons, and Roman’s; and Sohui Kim of The Good Fork and Gage & Tollner—all in Brooklyn, and Stone Creek Inn in East Quogue.
Patty’s passion is to constantly improve her soil, her yield of organic vegetables, and just as urgently she’s always thinking of how to stay afloat.
The film is directed by Roger Sherman, whose films have won two Academy Award nominations, an Emmy, a Peabody, and a James Beard Award; he is a founder of Florentine Films.
The film runs 35 minutes and will be followed by a Talk Back with Patty and Roger, and a champagne reception in the garden.
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Tickets are free but reservations are required.
In 1971, high school football was everything to the people of Alexandria. But when the local school board was forced to integrate an all black school with an all white school, the very foundation of football’s great tradition was put to the test.
Find Out MoreOctober 2021
Tickets are free but reservations are required.
At the dawn of the 20th century, a family in the Gullah community of coastal South Carolina — former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors’ Yoruba traditions — suffers a generational split. Young Haagar (Kaycee Moore) wants to move to the mainland away from tradition-bound matriarch Nana (Cora Lee Day). Former prostitute Yellow Mary (Barbara-O) gets a cold shoulder when she returns to the island with her female lover, especially from her sister Viola (Cheryl Lynn Bruce).
Find Out MoreDecember 2021
Tickets are free but reservations are required.
Walter Meyer (Danny Glover) is a retired mechanic who lost the love of his life one year earlier. Now that the holiday season is here, he invites daughters Rachel (Gabrielle Union) and Cheryl (Kimberly Elise) and sons Christian (Romany Malco) and Evan (Jessie T. Usher) to his house for a traditional celebration. Poor Walter soon realizes that if his bickering children and the rest of the family can spend five days together under the same roof, it will truly be a Christmas miracle.
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