Possible Films

Diario de Leon, Spain: December 2, 2009

Interview with the Spanish daily, Diario de Leon, on the occasion of the retrospective of Hartley’s films at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon.

DdL: Throughout your career you have always explored new media to express yourself, your fears, hopes, your nostalgic point of view in life, etc. In which one do you feel more comfortable, the cinema, theatre, opera…?

HH: I feel most comfortable making films. Ultimately, even my theater projects and the opera in 2008… these were somehow film projects.

DdL: Your films have passed from intimate stories in which characters are depicted through their relation with their closest world to those in which the world is much bigger, as well as the problems you concern yourself with.

HH: That reflects my own awareness of the wider world around me as I grew up and moved further out into that world. But my process is still the same. I try to react to what the world around me feels like at any given time.

DdL: We all seem to be in a kind of cage, in a a room, “a huis clos”, where other people are our worst enemies. Is there any way out?

HH: In my films “the way out” has always been other people. Usually it is some sort of love affair that is also an indication of a general human reality. The Girl From Monday probably takes this to its logical extreme. (It’s hard to tell from the translation, but I suspect you might be asking specifically about these new short films, PF2, so I will address that too.) All five of these films were made in my home in Berlin – a large apartment I rented. I was busy making feature films, like Fay Grim, and writing others. But I took the apartment because it was a good place to shoot little movies. And I took only subject matter that could be treated there. Or, to say it differently; I accepted any subject matter, but always treated it through the use of that space.

DdL: What role has religion played in your creation?

HH: It has been significant. I am not religious myself. And I have never tried to make a religious film. But I am very interested in how our inherited religious cultures help define the present time. I appreciate religious texts and some religious traditions as poetry. And I use some of this poetic short-hand to create new and unexpected meanings.

DdL: Has your artistic agenda changed since the 9-11?

HH: In some ways no, and in someways yes. My film, No Such Thing, which was made a year before 9-11 but released much later, was further delayed because the distributors felt it to be not sufficiently sensitive to the country’s rattled nerves. 9-11 should not have surprised anyone who reads a major newspaper at least once a week. Since I try to make movies that reflect the time and place they are made in, there is no way I can avoid the details of how communal life changes in the aftermath of events like these.

DdL: What was your personal aftermath of 9-11?

HH: Like many people here in NY, I guess. People were really helpful, sensible, and brave for three days. Then the president and his gang started talking about a “crusade” and a “war on terror”, etc. The newspapers all went along with it. Most people became idiots. Terrorists continued to kill. The US invaded Iraq. After awhile, I moved to Berlin.

DdL: Did your politics change as a result?

HH: I began to worry about my fellow citizens. That they could re-elect Bush in 2004 after so much damage and waste really shook me. So, yes, I think my political expectations changed. I lost faith in the population of my country.

DdL: Why don’t you come into the comercial cinema?

HH: What I am interested in is not popular enough to be commercial. If one of my films happens to become a little bit commercial, I’m happy about it. But I’m not the kind of person to arrange his creative energy to suit the needs of the commercial cinema without compromise. I always compromise. Sometimes the commercial cinema does too. Sometimes we need each other more. Sometimes less.

DdL: You have an aristotelian point of view regarding sense of humor. What do you want to express with such ironic detachment?

HH: Was Aristotle ironic? I need to know my Greeks better. Anyway, detachment is always just the “appearance of detachment”. It helps us see better. As a writer, I try to express my understanding of situations and my sympathy with characters ironically because irony highlights contradiction. It provides the contrast which helps to show the variety of human nature.

DdL: Is this a world populated with useless Sisyphus-like people?

HH: I’m not sure if you are asking me about “the real world” we share together, or the little world portrayed in my collection of new short films. Nevertheless, in both there are always some Sisyphus types. Apart from loving to write such types because they can be very funny, I also (in the real world) feel they are not always useless. It takes all types, as they say. Camus’ famous essay concludes,  “The struggle itself…is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”