Esteemed auteur Hal Hartley comes to The powerHouse Arena to discuss his work with painter and critic Stephen Ellis. This is a rare opportunity to meet the director and get a copy of his limited edition book, The Heart is a Muscle, a collection of stills and behind-the-scenes photos from films spanning his entire career.

About Hal Hartley:

Hal Hartley's first feature film, The Unbelievable Truth, was released in 1990. His film, Fay Grim, was released in 2007 and premiered at the Berlin and Sundance Film Festivals. His newest collection of short films, Possible Films 2 (made primarily in Berlin where he lived for four years), was released worldwide in April 2010. He completed his latest, Meanwhile, in March 2011. He has won awards at the Sundance Film Festival for his film Trust in 1991, the Tokyo International Film Festival for Amateur in 1994, the Cannes International Film Festival for Henry Fool in 1998, and the "Premi Noves Visions" award at the Sitges International Film Festival in Spain for The Girl From Monday in 2005. There have been retrospectives of his work in the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Korea, Argentina, and Poland. He lives in New York.

About Stephen Ellis:

Stephen Ellis is a painter whose primary interest has been in abstraction as a language of allusion. He received a BFA from Cornell University, followed by postgraduate study at The New York Studio School. His work has been exhibited world-wide in both solo and group shows, and is included in public collections including The Brooklyn Museum, The Fogg Museum, The Ashmolean Museum and The National Fund for Contemporary Art, Paris. He has received the Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2004), and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991) and CAPS (now New York Foundation for the Arts, 1986). Ellis has written extensively on contemporary art for European and American publications including, Parkett, Tema Celeste, and Art in America. He has been an Associate and Contributing Editor of Art in America and edited for Artforum and Parkett Magazine (Switzerland). Ellis currently teaches Color in the Foundation Program at The Cooper Union School of Art.