Anthony Anderson and Kate Walsh Top the North Fork TV Festival

For two days in late October, Greenport belonged to television. The North Fork TV Festival returned to the village for its 11th annual edition on October 21 and 22, packing screenings, panels and long lunches into American Beech and Sound View Greenport, and closing with an awards dinner that gave Anthony Anderson the festival's highest honor, the Canopy Award, and Kate Walsh its Ambassador for the Arts Award.

Photos by Santa Cruz Photography and Waldo Cabrera.

The talent lineup had the range only this festival seems to manage: Kelsey Grammer and Melissa Navia sat for the In Talks With... conversation series (Navia also picked up the BioAstra XX500 Arts and Science Inspiration Award), Bridget Moynahan headlined a Deadline dinner conversation, and Kelly AuCoin, Michael Nathanson, Abigail Hawk and Carol Alt rounded out a guest list that mixed network stars with the indie creators the festival exists to champion. Between the talks, a panel took on storytelling in the age of AI, and the pilot screenings and script competitions did the serious work of finding the next show you will be obsessed with.

It ended, properly, at the table: the Awards Dinner at The Halyard at Sound View Greenport, honoring Anderson and Walsh alongside the independent storytellers who are the festival's reason for being. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit, the festival keeps making the same lovely argument, that the future of television is worth a trip to the end of Long Island. On the evidence of this year, it is winning it.