D.J. Mendel

My America

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.

Meanwhile

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.

Years Later: The Unbelievable Truth and Its Consequences

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.

Accomplice

An artist-criminal far from home asks his assistant to pirate a rare videotape before the German Post Office Authorities come to confiscate it.

Fay Grim

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.

The Girl from Monday

A comic drama about a time in the near future when citizens are happy to be property traded on the stock exchange.

Upon Reflection: The Making of Trust

An 18-minute documentary made in 2005 by perennial Hartley actor D.J. Mendel, reunites the director and line producer Ted Hope with actors Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan for an off-the-cuff, affectionate, and surprisingly candid (it was hardly an easy shoot) recollection of their collaboration on the demanding Hartley's second feature.

Excerpts from Soon

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 Cloud of Unknowing

A young doctor believes that the spirit of his late wife has possessed a troubled patient in his hospital.

No Such Thing

A young journalist journeys to Iceland to find her missing fiancé only to encounter a mythical creature who longs to die.

The New Math(s)

This film is the visual component of the multi-media collaboration between the composer Louis Andriessen and Hal Hartley.

The Book of Life

New Year's Eve takes on new meaning when the Devil, Jesus Christ, and Christ's assistant Magdalena discuss and debate the End of the World.