Biography
Oliver Hardt studied theatre in Gießen, focussing on direction and dramaturgy. After receiving his degree, he spent the early 1990s as a director at the Frankfurt "Theater am Turm" (TAT). Now closed, the TAT was considered one of the most imminent avant-garde theatres in Europe. As part of his stage productions, he also made his first videos. Following his time in Frankfurt, he became a guest director at the New York based Wooster Group, and also worked with the Ensemble Modern on several music theatre productions.
From the mid-1990s on, film gained more importance as a medium and means of creative expression for Hardt. In 1996, he made his directorial debut with "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie", a tongue-in-cheek documentary on the history of the bikini. "Winterspruch – Arbeit für Eisler" (1999), a joint project of ten filmmakers, depicted the new interpretation of classic Hanns-Eisler-songs by the Frankfurt based band "arbeit" and subsequently won the Hessian Film Award. The documentaries "Plan B vom glücklichen Leben" (2003) – about the inhabitants of a welfare project in Frankfurt – and "Black Deutschland" (2006), which portrayed black artists and their stance on a society which defines itself as "white", were also nominated for the Hessian Film Award.
Hardt's commercial and idustry films, for instance for German airline Lufthansa, also garnered numerous international awards. Apart from his film work, he conceptualised and delivered media concepts for events like the German Design Awards. Moreover, he taught contemporary media at the Frankfurt Academy of Visual Arts (AVA).
After several years of research and preparation, Oliver Hardt completed his first cinema release in 2012: In the documentary "The United States of Hoodoo", he accompanies African-American writer Darius James on a journey from New York to the American South.