Locals Highlight Take 2 Documentary Film Festival

October 14, 1990 marked the end of a musical era. Leonard Bernstein was dead.

As his funeral cortege passed through Manhattan, mourning fans lined the streets, bidding farewell to the great American composer. When the procession reached a construction site, all of the workers took off their hats and waved, yelling, “Goodbye, Lenny!”

It was this footage that most shocked documentarian Susan Lacy—the creator of PBS series “American Masters” and a legend in her own right—and got her thinking.

“It just touched me so much,” Ms. Lacy, who splits her time between Sag Harbor and Manhattan, said of the procession, during a telephone interview last week. “Wouldn’t you want to know more about the conductor of the New York Philharmonic who wrote ‘West Side Story,’ who also got construction workers to wave goodbye?”

Set to an underscore of the second movement of Beethoven’s “Seventh Symphony,” which was the final piece conducted by Bernstein at his last performance months earlier, the cortege footage bookends Ms. Lacy’s favorite, and Emmy Award-winning, project, “Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note.” The film will screen in Ms. Lacy’s honor on Saturday, December 1, at the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.

The famous composer had many layers, Ms. Lacy said. And that’s one of the reasons he still remains interesting and relevant today.

“He was a composer during a time when the kind of music he was writing wasn’t in fashion with the so-called Academy. He wasn’t really accepted in his lifetime as a serious composer and that was very painful for him,” Ms. Lacy said. “He was a complex, troubled man and, in some ways, he was a joyous man, but he also had a lot of conflicts about what kind of musician he wanted to be—whether he wanted to write for Broadway or symphonies, whether he wanted to be a conductor or composer, whether he wanted to be gay or a family man. He was a conflicted man, but that makes for a very interesting portrait and I wanted to get to the heart of that.”

Ms. Lacy’s 120-minute film is the longest in the festival, which spans three days—Friday, November 30, through Sunday, December 2—and features 19 documentaries ranging from student shorts to amateur projects to professional productions.

“A good documentary is a good story,” film festival founder Jacqui Lofaro said during a telephone interview last week. “And a good story is what human nature is all about. We’re very much interested in each other and we like to hear stories about each other.”

For documentarian Tom Garber, that means turning the camera on stories that are rarely told. A filmmaker and sailor his whole life, the Hampton Bays resident recently completed his tenth project on maritime issues, “The Salt of the Sea,” which tells the tale of a vanishing breed of independent, commercial fishermen from the East End and New England, and what happens when they clash with the power of politics.

“I moved to Hampton Bays in 1980 and met, through my years here, a lot of commercial fishermen,” Mr. Garber said during a telephone interview last week. “They’ve always been telling me about the struggles they went through and how it was unfair and information wasn’t right and their quotas weren’t right and they kept urging me, ‘Tom, you ought to do a film about this.’”

He listened. Two years ago, a federal report revealed $48 million missing from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration’s enforcement fund and an “enormous amount of wrongdoing,” Mr. Garber said. Here was the smoking gun, he said, and the basis for a new documentary.

Filmed over the course of 18 months, with camera in hand, Mr. Garber spent 13- to 17-hour days aboard boats on Long Island, Massachusetts and Rhode Island out at sea, waiting for a good day’s catch.

“Oh my god, I’ve gotta tell you. I’ve been on a lot of boats. It’s what I do. But it was quite an experience going out with these guys,” Mr. Garber said. “You have to be at the dock usually around 3:30 or 4 a.m. You have to be there, there’s no waiting. They’re going to leave without you. You get on the dock, leave in the middle of the night and it’s dark and scary and stormy.”

By the end of each escapade, Mr. Garber was exhausted, he said.

“But those guys, they sleep for a few hours, get back up and do it again and again and again. Wow, what an incredible amount of hard work involved,” he said. “There is such an easier way to make a living than commercial fishing, yet despite all the struggle and obstacles in their way, they love it so much. It’s a passion. It’s really part of their lifestyle so they continue to do it despite all this crap that’s thrown at them.”

Moviegoers with no prior knowledge about commercial fishing shouldn’t be scared off by Mr. Garber’s newest film, he said. The message transcends the subject matter, he continued.

“It’s about inspiration. Look how hard these guys do what they love and how much it means to them. It’s an inspiring story, that they stick with it no matter what,” he said. “Viewers of my films are always going to be entertained. They’re going to be drawn in. You don’t have to come in with any prior preconceptions or knowledge. From the opening frame, I will draw you in emotionally and take you on a journey. You won’t fall asleep.”

The fifth annual Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will open with screenings on Friday, November 30, from 4:30 to 10 p.m. at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. The festival continues on Saturday, December 1, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday, December 2, from 10 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow most screenings. A gala honoring “American Masters” series creator Susan Lacy will be held on Saturday, December 1, at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 per screening, $25 for the gala and $100 for all screenings and events. For full schedule and more information, call 725-9500 or visit ht2ff.com.