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Hal Hartley - the Long Island born, blue-collar director and a touchstone figure in terms of contemporary American Independent cinema, burst onto the scene with The Unbelievable Truth in 1989. Funded by his benevolent bosses at the TV production company where he worked answering the phone, the dialogue driven comic-drama immediately established Hartley as a significant new talent. The crisp cinematography and playful approach to editing a la French New Wave formed Hartley’s distinctive visual style. Trust and Simple Men expanded on his thematic concerns – the clash between culture and class, the journey toward selfhood and romantic fulfilment and the ennui of Suburban small-town life – and contributed to the sense that Hal Hartley’s work existed in an exciting new genre all of its very own.
Cinephile Hartley not only displays a truly European sensibility but also harks back to the work of American auteurs such as Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges, whose witty, snappy inter-sexual banter and small town mores emerge again and again in Hartley’s films. Hartley has come to influence a whole new legion of American independent directors, with Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith professing themselves ardent admirers. Showing scant regard for the vagaries of the mainstream, the highly productive and multi-tasking director has repeatedly expressed his fascination for what he terms ‘the plastics of the medium’, producing several shorter experimental works – often filmed on digital video – that explore the infinite possibilities of the film medium.
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