Edie Falco, filmmaker Hal Hartley to talk about his newest film, 'Where to Land,' at Cinema Arts Centre

Joe Fulton, the hero of Hal Hartley’s new film, "Where to Land," is a highly regarded filmmaker, beloved by cinephiles and academics, but feeling adrift at the age of 58. As he begins making out his will, Joe’s friends and loved ones — including his ex-wife, played by Edie Falco — begin to suspect he’s dying. Really, though, he’s just looking for a new way to live.

"I want to do something useful and perennial," Joe says, applying on a whim to work at a graveyard. "I think my 30-year career as a writer, director and producer of motion pictures qualifies me perfectly to be an assistant groundskeeper."

Hartley and Falco will bring "Where to Land" to Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre on Sept. 19 and sit for a post-screening Q&A moderated by David Schwartz, a longtime collaborator with the venue and a guest programmer for Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image. For the three speakers, the event will mark a reunion of sorts: All are Long Islanders who attended SUNY Purchase in the 1980s and have remained in each other’s orbits ever since. But for Hartley’s fans, it may also mark the end of an era. After more than 35 years of crafting his intimate, often idiosyncratic comedies and dramas, Hartley says he’s turning to other pursuits.

"It’s definitely my last film this way, meaning a feature film that I finance myself, produce and all the rest of it," Hartley says. "It’s a lot of work, and I think it’s a younger man’s work. I don’t really want to do that anymore."

A stubbornly independent filmmaker whose titles are part of the prestigious Criterion Collection and whose film-related materials have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Hartley, 65, is one of his generation’s true originals. His debut feature, 1990's "The Unbelievable Truth" (also Falco’s film debut), became a hit at that year’s Sundance Film Festival and put Hartley at the crest of a new wave of young filmmakers who defined the indie spirit of the 1990s, including Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki and Steven Soderbergh. Even as that wave subsided, Hartley continued to write and direct, racking up a total of 14 feature films — including "Trust," "Henry Fool" and "Fay Grimm" — all characterized by his trademark combination of heightened dialogue, understated camerawork and sideways humor.

"He carved out a very distinctive niche," Schwartz notes. "He wasn’t always the trendiest director, because trends change. But he really maintained his style and his way of working."

Hartley, raised in Lindenhurst, got part of his filmmaking education as a patron at the Cinema Arts Centre (when it was still called the New Community Cinema). One of his frequent companions at screenings was Schwartz, from Centerport. Hartley met Falco, who grew up in Northport, after enrolling in Purchase, home to a small but hard-working group of performing arts students.

"We were all in the same financial strata," Falco, 62, says. "The people there were not rich, they were just people with talent and drive. So, you know, I met my crew there." Also at Purchase were aspiring actors Bill Sage, Robert John Burke and George Feaster, all of whom would appear in future Hartley films, including "Where to Land." Falco would go on to win multiple Emmys, for her roles in HBO’s "The Sopranos" and Showtime’s "Nurse Jackie."

Schwartz remembers seeing Hartley’s senior thesis, a 1984 short titled "Kid," at Purchase. "It was clear that he was really talented and single-minded, even in college," Schwartz says. "You could tell he was on to something special."

Hartley’s latest proved to be a somewhat difficult production. He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, but when the pandemic made shooting impossible he returned the money and in 2023 started a new campaign. (According to the project’s Kickstarter page,

Hartley raised $344,693 from 1,327 backers.) He cast Sage in the lead role and shot the film in New York City, using his own original compositions for the score and his Upper West Side apartment as a set.

Filming with such old friends was "a gift," Falco says. "Hal kind of has his own language, his own sort of shorthand," she adds. "I've been in and out of a gazillion productions since the last time I've worked with him, and it really was like going home in a way."

Hartley agrees — "I go back 35 years with all these people," he says — but insists that his indie days are likely behind him. He’s become increasingly interested in writing fiction; his first novel, "Our Lady of the Highway," about a convent of beer-brewing Brooklyn nuns, was published in 2022 and he’s currently writing another. He’s also open to work for hire following his eight-episode stint as a director for the Amazon Prime Video comedy series "Red Oaks" (2015-17).

"That was the best-paid job I ever had," Hartley says. "And one of the reasons it was such a pleasant job is, I worked very hard on it and enjoyed it — but I was not the boss."

The searching hero of "Where to Land" may not be Hartley’s mirror image, but the fictional filmmaker and the real one share at least a few traits. "He’s good at something, almost revered at something, but it’s not something that’s still important to him," Hartley says of Joe. "He’s looking for something deeper, something more spiritual."

Hartley adds: "But at the end, he’s a good worker, too."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com