Over the past decade, Hal Hartley has operated largely under the radar of the massive media attention focused on "independent film" in this country. At the same time, he is viewed abroad as one of the most significant American directors of his generation. Hartley was selected by French television’s La Sept Arte as the sole American participant in its prestigious "2000 Seen By" film series and was tapped by the Salzburg Opera Festival for a major staging of his play Soon. Festival awards for his screenplays at Sundance and Cannes bear witness to Hartley’s gift for quirky characters, lively dialogue, and wry humor: his films are all immediately identifiable by the deliberate cadence to his actors’ delivery and the strange normalcy that cloaks even the most eccentric turns of his plot lines. Yet these films are marked equally by a sensuous awareness of color and formal movement, as well by their hip rock scores—often composed and performed by the ubiquitous Ned Rifle (a Hartley alter ego). A fundamental humanity—reminiscent of the sensibility of the French New Wave—pervades Hartley’s narratives, even amidst outbursts of violence and quiet despair. In brief, he is an auteur. And if we can be said to have reached the end of cinema, then Hal Hartley may well be our last auteur.