Hal Hartley

Quote:
From the very beginning of Trust, Hal Hartley’s spellbinding second feature, snotty naïveté and cultured cynicism intertwine and dance in locked, hypnotic two-step. Just as teenaged Maria (Adrienne Shelly) tells her parents that she’s been knocked up by her high school’s alpha jock, leading her father to literally drop dead, Matthew (Martin Donovan) throws a tantrum of anti-technological philosophy in the repair division of a computer corporation where he works. While her idyllic future with quarterback Anthony comes crashing to the ground when he rejects her, Matthew remains stilted by his inability to cut ties with his abusive father (John MacKay). They meet-not-particularly-cute in an abandoned home and fall for each other in an odd, intriguingly deadpan way that underlines the unlikeliness of their union.Read More »

Synopsis
Joseph Fulton, a famous director, wants to work at a cemetery.
Meanwhile, he has his last will and testament drawn up.
His girlfriend thinks he’s dying. Rumor spreads and soon everyone
he knows gathers to say their last farewells.Read More »

Henry, or rather Ned, wants to leave his home town to travel the world or to look up a girlfriend. From the moment he wants to climb aboard the train, he is prevented or delayed by people from his surroundings. A friend has a car crash, a girl he knows is unhappy with her husband and tries to seduce Ned, several youths decide that, before he gets on board the train, he should be beaten up.The people in Kid don’t seem to communicate with each other, they continuously talk at each other and launch into monologues about the purpose of their lives. In this world,events determine the people and not the other way round.Read More »

Henry and Fay’s son Ned sets out to find and kill his father for destroying his mother’s life. But his aims are frustrated by the troublesome Susan, whose connection to Henry predates even his arrival in the lives of the Rifle family.Read More »

A commercially realistic but artistically conflicted playwright lends his Berlin apartment to a young actress friend so she can rehearse her drama school audition while he goes off to save his doomed production in New York.Read More »

Hartley’s conscientious assistant in Berlin receives weekly letters from her boss and sends him the books he needs as he struggles in Amsterdam to create the staging for Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s opera, “la Commedia.”Read More »

An ambitious and idealistic young actress comes to Berlin to convince an American ex-pat filmmaker that she must be his next muse – the leading lady of his first great German film.Read More »

Two students and their teacher seem to be fighting – literally – over the proper solution to a complex mathematical equation. Is it the key to time and space or a coded instruction manual about their own secrete urges? An alchemical action movie? A real life cartoon with original music by Dutch heavyweight, Louis Andriessen. Hal Hartley fashioned this whimsical piece of fight choreography with three of his recent performer/collaborators, Miho Nikaido, David Neumann and DJ Mendel.Read More »

Hal Hartley reveals the tireless experimentation, curiousity and playfulness that lies behind his many feature films in his this short film, The Sisters of Mercy, starring Parker Posey and Sabrina Lloyd.Read More »