Off-Hampton Film Festival Returns for Biggest Year Yet

From humble beginnings, the Off-Hampton Film Festival is showing remarkable growth as it returns to Southampton Cultural Center (25 Pond Lane) for its third year this week. The festival, which unfolds over two Saturdays, January 17 and 24, has tripled the number of filmmakers involved, added more sponsors and cemented itself as something that appears to be evolving towards a bright future.

“I set it up on Film Freeway, which is how people submit to film festivals nowadays. And, yeah, I got a lot of submissions,” explains Off-Hampton Film Festival co-founder and Creative Director Adam Baranello, a Hampton Bays-based dancer, musician, artist and filmmaker who launched the festival in 2024 with Ben McHugh, a close friend, fellow artist and owner of Hampton Photo Arts in Southampton. They run the festival now with the help of McHugh’s partner and local entrepreneur Cristin Motty.

“There are definitely more films and more filmmakers, because last year’s programming included Jim Morrison and Dan Bauer for the first event, and then the second one was my film, Night. So it was just really three different filmmakers,” explains Baranello, who has featured one of his movies each year at the festival. This year, Baranello, who also serves as Artistic Director of the East End Special Players (EESP) — a local group that seeks to “enhance the lives of adults with diverse abilities and special needs by providing opportunities for self-expression through theater performance and artistic experiences” — is presenting past projects he filmed with the EESP on Saturday, January 17 at 3 p.m.

Those films, which include Fusée and Faire La Fête, were made in conjunction with the Watermill Center and are about acceptance of self, celebration of differences, individuality and “being weird,” according to Baranello, who says the use of French language, which is overdubbed, is because “we don’t exactly know what’s being said until we read the translation. And that was kind of a very subtle way of saying, ‘Hey, we all communicate differently. We all don’t always understand each other right away, but we are connected.’”

Baranello and members of the East End Special Players will speak and answer questions after the films after they screen. Later, starting at 7 p.m. on January 17, the remainder of the day’s programming will begin with live music from Chris Kline and a screening of micro shorts by Dylan Elizondo.

“They’re like minute shorts for Instagram and TikTok and stuff, but they’re very cinematic,” Baranello says of Elizondo’s films. “His cinematography is really cool, so I asked him to put together four or five of them, because it’ll be like, four or five minutes. And he said, yes, so we’re going to screen those.”

After that, Hunters, directed by Zachary Jack Ward; I Often Dream of Trains, directed by Billy Baker and David Gianopoulos; Women of Wampum, directed by Shinnecock native and professor at Waterloo University in Iowa Kelsey Leonard and Alejandro Miranda; and Range Anxiety, directed by Andrew Herzman, will all screen, followed by short talkbacks with Baranello and the filmmakers.

“The longest film on night one is Rage Anxiety, and that’s by Andy Hertzman — he’s our tech guy at the cultural center,” Baranello says. “Andy literally made the film because of the film festival the last couple years. … He finished it, he sent it to me, and he was like, ‘I made this film because the film fest, your film festival, inspired me, and hopefully we can watch it there,’” Baranello recalls, pointing out that Rage Anxiety has already gone on to be in other film festivals. “So that’s pretty cool. And that’s what we want to happen. People come and they get inspired to show something or make something. And hopefully we give them a platform to do it,” he adds.

Kicking off the following Saturday, January 24, at Southampton Cultural Center, the second day of programing is a selection of what Baranello called much “edgier” films. The night’s lineup includes two dance on film pieces based on movement videos, which were brought to his attention through a friend at the Watermill Center. After Wake up the Bats, directed by Gray Laxton, and Life in Plastic by Juliette Rafael, and an additional short film made in 1997, comes the night’s feature film, Beautiful Pam by J.R. Stokes, which was a submission through Film Freeway that the Creative Director loved and felt needed to be shown. “It’s one of the few films this year that are not, like six degrees of separation,” Baranello says, noting that everything is growing at a natural pace and moving positively forward, year after year.

In addition to the films and live music, attendees will find a few more surprises on both nights of the festival, including art for sale, some unique bites and more.

Learn more about the Off-Hampton Film Festival and buy tickets at off-hampton-film-festival.square.site.