Hal Hartley

Back in 2007, the New York Film Festival welcomed home some of its most beloved sons, with the likes of Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach and the Coen brothers returning to the city that spawned countless generations of American filmmakers. The New York auteur, it seemed, was back. Yet one innovative inhabitant remained notable by his absence from this otherwise illustrious line up. The catalogue of films that cements Hal Hartley as one of New York’s finest contemporary filmmakers is perhaps less instantly evocative than those of the aforementioned, and for fair reason. While the former have continued to set new precedents on the American indie (not to mention mainstream) circuit, for a time Hartley’s career seemed to have gone the way of the man; missing.

In truth, the smart cinema which Hartley helped articulate through such early ’90s films as Simple Men and Flirt simply evolved, and with it his audience began to savour a more worldly palette. As the Long Island native remained a proud home-grown custodian, his lack of desire to explore a cinema more synonymous with his West Coast counterparts allowed him to slip between the cracks of his own subverted suburbia. Although taking up permanent residence in Berlin in 2005 in preparation for Fay Grim (the long awaited follow up to 1997’s provocative comedy, Henry Fool), Hartley is still regarded as a uniquely American architect of independent cinema. Still, it may be some time before Hartley graces the likes of his home state festival, with filming for his latest feature, Moving the Arts, due to commence in Germany later this year.

LWLies caught up with the filmmaker to discuss perceptions of his elusive past, the forthcoming release of his DVD collection, and the future of independent cinema.

LWLies: Over the last few years you’ve been teaching at Harvard, researching in Europe, and directing new films. But at the same time, you say the words ‘Hal Hartley’ and people are like, ‘Oh yeah, didn’t he kind of disappear?’ Do you feel like you’ve been pinned with this label of ‘the missing auteur’? Do you feel like people are deliberately ignoring the scope of your work?

Hartley: I did disappear a little. At least, I become harder to find. I make films that are less popular than those I made in the early ’90s. So, it’s to be expected. People respond to what excites them at the moment. That’s how it should be. That’s what I do.

LWLies: What would you say are the big differences between the indie world as it was when you started out and the way it is today?

Hartley: It’s the same, I think, strangely. The technology has changed in a big way and that seems to be the main preoccupation. I always thought careers like mine, back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, became possible because of some sort of crisis in the film distribution business. No one was making money distributing films and suddenly – after those Hanif Kureishi/Stephan Frears films, and Jim Jarmusch’s first couple of films… then there was this willingness to go see things that were more idiosyncratic. I think something like that might be happening again. But this time it has to do with the internet.

LWLies: What do you think the future holds for indie filmmakers?

Hartley: Indie or otherwise, the internet – ED, VOD, etc.

LWLies: Are you inspired by the more general landscape of film today? Talking to young filmmakers, there’s a lot of scepticism and negativity about opportunities for independently minded filmmakers right now.

Hartley: These periods of technological transition can be frustrating because no one really knows how to move forward. So producers, distributors, sales agents, even filmmakers… they tend to freeze up and become more conservative. I have hopes that once everyone figures out how to make money from distributing films electronically there will be opportunities for smaller as well as larger corporate manufactured films.

LWLies: What do you make of the path trodden by some of your contemporaries like Gus Van Sant into the mainstream?

Hartley: Van Sant’s films are great. I see all of them.

LWLies: Can you see a time where you stop making films all together?

Hartley: I used to think that. But now I know it’s what I do and how I think. Most of my recent filmmaking has been outside the scope of commercial feature filmmaking and it has been satisfying. There’s not as much money in it. But then it doesn’t cost as much either.

LWLies: Why has it taken so long to get this DVD collection together?

Hartley: I don’t know, really. Rights clearances, probably.

LWLies: If you hadn’t become a filmmaker, what would you have been?

Hartley: A composer or a real estate magnate. Or both.

LWLies: Do you have any regrets?

Hartley: Making the move to the intel-processor Mac. I’ve just gone back to my pre-intel G5. It still works like a charm.

The Hal Hartley Collection, a three-disc set comprising Trust, Henry Fool and The Girl From Monday, is available on DVD from July 27 courtesy of Artificial Eye.