Short film festival in Southampton and Montauk

In the world of art and design, sometimes less is more. For Be Film, The Underground Film Festival, shorter is better.

The festival, founded by Laurence Asseraf as a celebration of short films from around the world is coming to the East End next week for the third year in a row. A selection of seven films will be screened at the Montauk Library and the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton on July 22 and July 23, respectively.

The festival began as a gallery five blocks away from Ground Zero a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“I wanted to do something to revive the neighborhood because people were not willing to go down there,” Ms. Asseraf explained.

The gallery, named “A Taste of Art,” showcased photos and video art works. According to Ms. Asseraf, her gallery was one of the first to have a flat screen TV, which could be seen from the street. Ms. Asseraf also got a liquor license and the gallery had a bar and served sophisticated drinks and appetizers. It quickly became a hangout for artists and journalists who came to the area to cover Ground Zero and ended up at Ms. Asseraf’s gallery, to the owner’s delight.

“I got 32 reviews in 18 months without having done any press or advertising,” she said.

As the gallery grew steadily more successful, the Tribeca Film Festival was launched and film lovers swarmed to the area. Ms. Asseraf caught the film fever and did a mini festival at the gallery to help young filmmakers. In 2004, Be Film, known at that time as the Tribeca Underground Film Festival, was born. It lasted five days, during which short films were projected on the wall as people sat on the floor, filling the gallery.

“The filmmakers were so pleased that they asked me to keep doing screenings,” Ms. Asseraf said. And she did. Renting a bigger space and changing the name of the festival to Be Film in response to a request by the Tribeca Film Festival, Ms. Asseraf began an annual screening of short underground films.

“I wanted to be a springboard for talent, to help young filmmakers be known,” she said.

Be Film now receives submissions from all over the world. This year, there are 75 films on the program from 27 countries.

According to Ms. Asseraf, the festival has also become an important influence in the world of short films.

“Every single year since our inception, shorts that had been nominated in our festival win Oscars or are short-listed,” she said.

Be Film accepts films in narrative, animation, experimental, documentary, music video, spec and 3D stereoscopic formats, but awards prizes in only four of those categories: animation, experimental, spec and 3D stereoscopic. It is the first short film festival in America to start a 3D stereoscopic category and programmers identified more than 30 films eligible for the category, of which nine have been selected to be shown at this year’s festival.

“It’s the first time we had this category, so we partnered with Dolby to have the best technology for this project,” Ms. Asseraf said.

There will be a selection of seven short films at the screenings in the Be Film sampler in Southampton and Montauk. The first will be Gary Lieb’s “The Unnatural History of Wall Street” a one-minute animated film.

“I always make a point of having a one-minute film,” Ms. Asseraf said, explaining that many people are skeptical about the possibility of telling a story in just one minute.

The next film will be Gabriel Sirbu’s “Life Is Hard,” the first-place winner of the narrative category and the story of a thief breaking into a woman’s car during a traffic jam and getting trapped inside. Other films include “Birth,” by Signe Baumane; “Tony Zoreil,” by Valentin Potier, which Ms. Asseraf described as “one of the best short films I have ever seen”; Bill Plympton’s “Santa: The Fascist Years”; “KJFG#5” by Alexei Alexeev; and “Surprise,” a French farce by Fabrice Maruca.

“This year, Be Film is very proud to screen in the Hamptons at two venues,” Ms. Asseraf said.

The screenings will take place on Wednesday, July 22, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library, and on Thursday, July 23, at 7 p.m. at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton.