BUY TICKETS

ARCMANORO NILES: FORGOTTEN WORDS I NEVER GOT TO SAY

Arcmanoro Niles, 3AM My Mind Won’t Rest Again (From a Distance I Look Organized and Brave), 2024. Oil, acrylic, and glitter on canvas, 23 x 35 inches. Collection of Jonathan Travis. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London.

Homepage Hero Carousel: Include

BOOK LAUNCH—ALICE BABER: AN ARTIST’S TRIUMPH OVER TRAGEDY

Book Launch
Alice Baber: An Artist’s Triumph Over Tragedy
by Gail Levin

Join us for a book launch celebrating Alice Baber: An Artist’s Triumph Over Tragedy by art historian and artist biographer Gail Levin. This new biography revisits the life and work of Alice Baber, an abstract painter known for luminous fields of color that seem to float and shift with light. During her lifetime, Baber’s work entered major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the permanent collection of Guild Hall, before her premature death at just fifty-four. Levin draws on extensive research to trace Baber’s artistic development, her place in the mid-century art world, and the forces that contributed to her later obscurity. More than a portrait of an individual artist, the book offers a needed reappraisal, restoring Baber to the history of American modernism and introducing her work to a new generation.

SUMMERDOCS: THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2

Co-Presented by HamptonsFilm & Guild Hall

In THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2, Amir Bar-Lev tells a complex, harrowing, and moving story that unpacks the industry of extreme mountain climbing and its changing culture.

Focusing on a 2021 expedition, mountaineers John Snorri Sigurjónsson, an Icelander, and Pakistani father-son team Ali and Sajid Sadpara set out to be the first to summit K2 in the winter, when the mountain’s conditions are the cruelest. The men soon find themselves sharing the treacherous ascent with influencer climbers and their film crews, commercial expedition clients, and Nims, a Nepalese celebrity mountaineer, and his team of Sherpas.

THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2 takes us to the icy heights and unpredictable weather of K2 and reveals a surprising and layered story — one of strategy and determination, class and caste, money and power — all under life and death circumstances.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with director, Amir Bar-Lev, HamptonsFilm Co-Chair, Alec Baldwin, and HamptonsFilm Chief Creative Officer, David Nugent.

Amir Bar-Lev’s directorial credits include FIGHTER (2001), MY KID COULD PAINT THAT (2007), the Emmy-winning THE TILLMAN STORY (2010), HAPPY VALLEY (2014), and LONG STRANGE TRIP (2017). Bar-Lev also co-produced TROUBLE THE WATER, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2008 Academy Awards.

SUMMERDOCS: KNIFE—THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF SALMAN RUSHDIE

Co-Presented by HamptonsFilm & Guild Hall

More than 30 years after Iran issued a fatwa, a religious decree calling for author Salman Rushdie’s death over The Satanic Verses, Rushdie traveled to Chautauqua to speak about the United States as a sanctuary for exiled writers and artists. The event marked the 20th anniversary of a writer-refuge program—a setting meant to celebrate safety and creative freedom. It was there, in an unrelated incident, that a young man rushed the stage, intent on killing him with a knife. Using excerpts from Rushdie’s works, including his powerful memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Alex Gibney’s documentary is both a striking testament to freedom of expression and a defiant response to the attempt on Rushdie’s life.

The film incorporates never-before-seen footage shot by Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, in the days and weeks following the attack. This material offers a graphic, unflinching, and deeply intimate account of what happened. It also traces Rushdie’s physical and spiritual recovery, including the challenges he continues to face, from losing an eye to the reduced use of one hand.

Knife blends reportage with fictionalized dialogues to explore the mindset of the attacker, probing the “why” behind the violence. At its core, the film is a portrait of resilience—of Rushdie’s own extraordinary strength and the love that carried him through—and a call to action against censorship and hatred. It argues that art itself can be a form of resistance.

In Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, Gibney, working with longtime collaborators Andy Grieve (editor) and Will Bates (composer), crafts a poetic dreamscape that reflects how Rushdie views his writing as his own “knife,” a tool to fight back, reclaim his story, and respond to violence with imagination and art.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with Knife director, Alex Gibney, HamptonsFilm Co-Chair, Alec Baldwin, and HamptonsFilm Chief Creative Officer, David Nugent.

Alex Gibney is an Oscar-, Emmy-, Grammy-, and Peabody-winning filmmaker known for incisive, gripping documentaries. His works include TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, GOING CLEAR, ENRON, IN RESTLESS DREAMS, and forthcoming films on Elon Musk and Luigi Mangione.

FEEL GOOD FILMS: PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE

Guild Hall’s Feel Good Films series continues, bringing the joyful absurdity of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure to the big screen. When Pee-Wee Herman’s beloved bicycle is stolen, he embarks on a wildly imaginative cross-country quest to get it back. Packed with quirky humor and unforgettable moments, this quotable cult classic promises big laughs and pure moviegoing fun.

FEEL GOOD FILMS: RUSHMORE

Guild Hall’s new Feel Good Films series kicks off with Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, the offbeat coming-of-age comedy that launched a distinctive cinematic voice. Follow eccentric student Max Fischer as ambition, friendship, and first love collide in hilarious fashion. Join us for a witty, heartfelt screening celebrating youthful optimism and Anderson’s signature style.

IN CONVERSATION: ROSS BLECKNER & DAVID SALLE

Join artists Ross Bleckner and David Salle for a conversation moderated by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts at Guild Hall. The discussion will focus on Bleckner’s summer exhibition at Guild Hall, Never The Less, which spans intimate studies dating back to the 1980s and features larger, more recent paintings. Bleckner and Salle first met in the early 1970s at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), before moving to New York City, where they established themselves as two of the most influential painters of the last fifty years.

Come early to visit the galleries and enjoy live music in the garden from 5:30-7:30 PM as part of Third Thursdays programming.

EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH & ARTIST TALK: CLAIRE WATSON

Join artist Claire Watson for an exhibition walkthrough and artist talk in conjunction with her exhibition Re-Paired, which spans earlier and recent works, featuring mixed-media wall works and sculptures. Watson’s practice draws on found materials; in recent work, she deconstructs salvaged leather garments and rebuilds them into new compositions using sewing and pattern-making techniques. Emphasizing leather’s tactile and structural qualities, the works transform worn, utilitarian objects into abstract reflections on the body, labor, and presence.

FREE WITH MUSEUM ADMISSION

 

IN-MOTION: GHTAC & DONNA KAZ

Guild Hall’s Teen Arts Council (GHTAC) invites you to join an open workshop sharing work developed over the past month with theatre maker, choreographer, and Guerilla Girl, Donna Kaz.

Through movement-based exploration, Council members have engaged in discovery and dialogue, collaborating to use the body as a tool for expression and inquiry.

Join us to observe the process, participate in guided exercises, and experience the creative language they have built together.

Seating is extremely limited – book today!

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE: LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES

by Christopher Hampton
based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
directed by Marianne Elliott

BAFTA Award-winner Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) joins Aidan Turner (Rivals) in a striking new staging of Christopher Hampton’s celebrated adaptation of the classic novel, where among the glittering salons of the super-rich, one misstep can mean ruin.

Marquise de Merteuil is a master in the art of survival. Alongside the magnetic Vicomte de Valmont, they turn seduction into strategy and weaponise desire. But when their alliance collapses into rivalry, the battle between them threatens to destroy everyone in their path.

Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Marianne Elliott (Angels in America) directs this thrilling game of love, lies, and social warfare.

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE: FRANKENSTEIN

by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley

Directed by Academy Award®-winner Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire), Frankenstein features Benedict Cumberbatch (Hamlet, BBC’s Sherlock) and Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary, Trainspotting) alternating between the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creation.

Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the increasingly desperate and vengeful Creature determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.

Scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil, are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic tale.

Captured live on stage in 2011, this thrilling, sold-out production became an international sensation, experienced by almost half a million people in cinemas around the world.