Many years after her notorious husband, Henry Fool, fled after killing a neighbor, Fay Grim receives a visit from CIA agent Fulbright, who tells her that Henry is dead, but that some of his journals have been unearthed in France. She sets forth on a globe-trotting odyssey that soon leads to the discovery that he is alive, and his journals are more than they appear to be.
Henry’s 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 Grim family.
A documentary concerning the periods between the actual takes during the production of Hartley's short film "Iris," revealing the imagination, diligence and patience that goes into composing a shot.
Meanwhile concerns Joe Fulton, a man who can do anything from fixing your sink to arranging international financing for a construction project. He produces online advertising and he’s written a big fat novel. He’s also a pretty good drummer. But success eludes him. For Joe can’t keep himself from fixing other people’s problems. His own ambitions are constantly interrupted by his willingness and ability to go out of his way for others.
This short film was packaged on video with Hartley's featurette "Surviving Desire." It affectionately examines the lives of a group of "young, middle-class, white, college-educated, unskilled, broke, drunk" Brooklynites who would love to make something of their lives -- assuming they can pay the rent first.
Self-funded Hal Hartley project shot on 16mm with a focus on a somewhat bizarre romance.
A comic drama about a time in the near future when citizens are happy to be property traded on the stock exchange.
A minimalist, atmospheric, meditation on the theme of "Love" or "Amour" that focuses on reconciliation and forgiveness.
A series of impromptu interviews with Hal Hartley, Adrienne Shelly, and some of Hartley's other most frequent collaborators on his style, career, and process.
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."
An artist-criminal far from home asks his assistant to pirate a rare videotape before the German Post Office Authorities come to confiscate it.
A young doctor believes that the spirit of his late wife has possessed a troubled patient in his hospital.
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.
Excerpts from performances of Hal Hartley's play "Soon", a production inspired by the 1993 events in Waco, Texas involving the religious sect called the Branch Davidians and their collision with the US Federal Government.
The mundane circumstances of a city under siege.
Hartley and his wife, Miho Nikaido, travel to Japan to see her parents and reflect on 12 years of marriage, her career ambitions, and the adventures of growing older.
A woman talks about how hard her life is.
A short film about friendship, disillusionment, loathing and despair, in which the pictures of three young men talking are juxtaposed with slowmotion shots of aggressive dogs. Three young men are talking about Richie's marriage to Evelyn, which has put their friendship on the back burner. Richie explains how that could happen. "She fell for me, and they hate me for it", he says. Everyone was mad about Evelyn, but Richie makes it clear that their marriage is not exactly a bed of roses. He admits that be bluffed and lied and more or less asks his friends for forgiveness.
A behind the scenes look, including an interview with Hal Hartley, surrounding his play "Soon," a production inspired by the 1993 events in Waco, Texas involving the religious sect called the Branch Davidians and their collision with the US Federal Government.
21 monologues written by American playwrights form a sort of fractured portrait of the American collective psyche. Ranging from the sad to the hilarious, from the angry to the tentatively celebratory, many of the major and recurrent issues associated with our fraught but beloved union are reconsidered with elegance, wit, brutal honesty, and a little outright insanity.
