ON THE ISLE Down a Desert Road
A native son's saga of a dancer will open the LI Film Fest
by Steve Parks
Staff Writer
May 1, 2001
TODD ROBINSON knew that his ancestors had settled in
Westhampton Beach in the 17th century. But it wasn't until this year,
when he learned his Oscar-finalist documentary would open the Long Island
Film Festival in the village of his summer haunts, that he learned the dark
side of his family history.
"At one time, my grandfather told me, Robinsons owned the
whole damn town," he said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "But a
drunkard in the family drank it all away." That's a story for another day.
The one Robinson will be telling on film Thursday night at the Westhampton
Beach Performing Arts Center is the true, if bizarre, life saga of Marta Becket.
A successful Broadway dancer until her car broke down in Death Valley Junction,
Calif., Becket decided to open a theater in the ghost town's abandoned adobe
hotel.
In the absence of a live audience - the nearest living town
was 25 miles away - Becket painted a mural of a Renaissance audience on the
interior walls.
In time, her theater - Amargosa, after the hotel - drew a
real audience to witness Becket's "eccentric, narcissistic artistic expression,"
Robinson said.
"Amargosa," finalist for an Oscar in 2000 (losing to "One
Day in September"), has been a film festival favorite ever since - from Seattle
to Sao Paulo. "We've found that people are deeply moved," said Robinson, "because
they project themselves into this emotional desert. Everyone has a creative urge,"
he added. "Some, like Marta, have taken the leap. Some have not. But no matter
which side you're on, you can relate." Robinson, an Adelphi University graduate
who spent most of his summers at his grandparents' place in Westhampton Beach,
said he used to watch Pink Floyd movies at the old theater on Main Street and
was delighted to see, at a Janis Ian concert there last summer, "how beautifully
it's been fixed up." While Robinson's deep-rooted pedigree makes the Long Island
premiere of his film "an especially native event," said festival director Chris
Cooke, all of the six features and 20-odd shorts are either shot on the Island or
produced by Long Islanders.
Beyond its four days at Westhampton Beach, the Long
Island Film Festival will extend its 18th anniversary season into June with
another batch of features and shorts in Huntington, Northport Theatre and Great
River. "The more screens the better to support a native industry that just seems
to keep growing," said Cooke.
Long Island Film Festival, Thursday-Sunday at Westhampton
Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main St.; tickets: $15; $10 film society
members, $8 students.
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