But this year we expect our memories - and, we hope, yours - will be made by the Festival's raison d'être - movies - specifically the five titles outlined below. Three of these - TURN THE RIVER, A TABLE IN HEAVEN and GAHAN WILSON: BORN DEAD, STILL WEIRD - are World Premieres going on the market for distribution. I AM AN ANIMAL: THE STORY OF INGRID NEWKIRK AND PETA, a documentary portrait of PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, will air on HBO November 19th, while BODY OF WAR, co-directed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, is a U.S. premiere following an acclaimed Toronto debut.

We are very pleased that Dan Goldberg has joined JW+A to help out with Hamptons. To discuss coverage, please reach him at 212-595-6161 or dan@jeremywalker.com. The films are presented here in order of their Festival screenings.

A TABLE IN HEAVEN is Andrew Rossi's lively portrait of Le Cirque founder Sirio Maccioni and the three sons - Mauro, Marco and Mario - to whom he will one day leave his formidable cultural and culinary legacy. The access Rossi gains to this loud, loving and larger-than-life family is remarkable, but so is his timing: the film takes us through the closing of the "old" Le Cirque on New Years Eve 2004 and its celebrated re-birth in New York's Bloomberg building two years later. While it's true that A TABLE IN HEAVEN is a must-see for anyone who cares about food (and that the kitchen in the Maccionis' Manhattan apartment is just as small as their own), Rossi's film also has a lot to say about the challenges of running a family business, the enduring allure of simplicity (see prosciutto e melone), and the questionable legitimacy of a new elite that may shape, for better or worse, one of New York's most treasured institutions.

TURN THE RIVER is one of those smart independent dramas that will give audiences a whole new way to think about a Hollywood star. Famke Janssen plays Kailey, a divorced, tough-as-nails mother who makes her living playing poker upstate and hustling games in a Manhattan pool hall. But when Kailey gets the idea that her ex-husband David (Matt Ross of HBO's "Big Love") may be hurting their 11-year-old son Gulley (Jaymie Dornan), she hatches an expensive scheme to take Gulley away. To get the money, Kailey manages to score the high-stakes pool match of her career, but the pressure - and Gulley's vulnerability - nearly ruins her. Janssen trades glamour for grit to play this complex, working-class hero whose utter control behind a cue belies the inner turmoil of a woman truly on the verge. The narrative calls for restrained moviemaking, nicely provided by Chris Eigeman, best known for his work as an actor in the films of Whit Stillman. Eigeman, who also wrote the script, makes his feature debut as a director with TURN THE RIVER.

I AM AN ANIMAL offers a fascinating look at the woman behind PETA, the radical organization that has become the world's largest, most respected and most influential animal rights group. For the past 27 years, Ingrid Newkirk and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have tirelessly attacked one of the pillars of civilization: mankind's dominance over and exploitation of animals. Taking full advantage of the unprecedented access he gained to Newkirk and the inner-workings of her organization, director Matthew Galkin thoroughly explores PETA's ideology and often militant tactics, which he deftly counterbalances with the voices of some of PETA's most vociferous critics. But Galkin also gets at the psychological underpinnings of its co-founder's personality and motivations, making I AM AN ANIMAL an intimate, provocative profile of one woman's very public war against man's inhumanity to animal.

BODY OF WAR is arguably the most nakedly truthful documentary to date about the real effects of the Iraq war on one soldier, his family and friends. In BODY OF WAR, we meet Tomas Young, only 25 and paralyzed from a single bullet after serving in Iraq for less than a week. Hauntingly framed by historic footage of the House and Senate debates that sent U.S. troops into battle, the film captures what it's like for Tomas to face the challenges of adjusting to his disability in compelling, unflinching detail. Forthright and frank, we see the effects of Tomas' injury upon his new marriage, the agonizing physical and emotional daily toll, and encounter the shocking lack of adequate healthcare for veterans. Eventually and movingly, Young finds his own unique and passionate voice against the war. Co-directors Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro have made a film that is poetic and political, achingly intimate and yet far-reaching in scope. Eddie Vedder contributes two powerful new songs that soar with the courageous veteran's soul and spirit.

GAHAN WILSON: BORN DEAD, STILL WEIRD is Steven-Charles Jaffe's lively portrait of a mysterious American artist whose work you probably know and love. While the editorial agendas of The New Yorker and Playboy may seem at odds, both have for years regularly published the work of illustrator and cartoonist Wilson, whose often subversive, sometimes ghoulish and always rich imagery has gained him fans worldwide. While Jaffe's documentary benefits greatly by testimony from the boldface (Hugh Hefner, David Remnick, Guillermo del Toro, Lewis Black, Randy Newman), it is his interviews with Wilson and his wife Nancy that reveal the artist's personal demons and the origins of his dark visions. Anyone fascinated by New Yorker folklore will be thrilled with Jaffe's access to the weekly trip Wilson makes, via Hampton Jitney, to the cloistered Midtown office of Robert Mankoff, his editor there. It is within this context that we learn that, even with all of Wilson's success, "rejection is the essence of the cartooning business."