Cleophas and His Own

73 years later, first-time, independent filmmaker Michael Maglaras has used Hartley’s poignant narrative as the screenplay for a feature-length film. “Cleophas and His Own” is on a national tour which began in June 2005 in Hartley’s hometown of Lewiston, Maine. Screenings are scheduled in select cities through November, 2006. Maglaras will appear at each showing to discuss the film and take questions from the audience. The movie is scheduled for release on DVD in July.

“Cleophas and His Own” will be shown in New York City at Sunshine Cinema, Thursday, June 29th at 7:00 PM.

“Cleophas and His Own” presents Hartley (played by Maglaras) very near the end of his life. As the film opens, Hartley makes his way painfully to his makeshift studio in the remote coastal village of Corea, Maine, where, tired, alone, and gravely ill, he recounts to an unseen visitor a sad story of the fate that befell the Francis Mason family, with whom he spent two idyllic summers on a remote Nova Scotia island in 1935 and 1936. Those two summers forever transformed Hartley’s work as an artist, and so transformed the history of American art.

Employing Hartley’s narrative in its entirety, the film uses flashbacks and twenty-four of Hartley’s paintings and drawings to illuminate the joy and acceptance Hartley felt living with this simple family, as well as the pain he endured when the Masons suddenly lost three family members in a hurricane – and Hartley lost the man he loved: their son Alton (whom he called “Adelard” in his story).

Devastated by these events, Hartley wrote “Cleophas and His Own” as a private testament, and then spent the last seven years of his life painting and repainting the Mason family and depicting the stark reality of the cruelness of the sea – leaving behind an unparalleled body of work.