Une nuit avec Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes, Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud. USA, 1985, 42 min, digital (original format: 16 mm), colour, original version with French sub-titles. With Bruce Cree, Phelim Dolan and Melissa Brown  

The violent love between French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. 

“Of course I am not alone in having experienced my discovery of Rimbaud as a momentous event […]. What I am really actually interested in, is the myth of Rimbaud, how people project on him […]. Many fiction writers and poets, like Henry Miller, have written famous tributes to Rimbaud. They fully identify with him, just as later, musicians like Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison and Patti Smith also did. I thought it would be interesting to play around with this notion of Rimbaud as a legendary icon and find various voices and elements to shape our vision of this icon.” Todd Haynes in Todd Haynes, American Chimeras, 2023 

Todd Haynes, surprise film  

Todd Haynes, Dottie Gets Spanked. USA, 1993, 30 min, digital (original format: 16 mm), colour, original version with French sub-titles 

With J. Evan Bonifant, Barbara Garrick and Julie Halston 

In suburban New York, 7-year-old Steven Gale is fascinated by TV star Dottie Frank. This obsession is a source of worry for his father, since Dottie was idolised more by little girls. Steven wins a competition and is given the opportunity of visiting the studio where his favourite programme is shot. 

“In Dottie Gets Spanked, […] a 7-year-old boy is haunted night and day by two obsessions: spanking, a fantasy that plays out in his dramatic dreams with an indiscernible overlapping of fear and desire, and a sitcom star (inspired by Lucille Ball) who he draws constantly. […] From fascination to fantasy, via drawing and identification, this child’s view keeps taking possession of the object of his obsession, giving her an intimate form, and ultimately it is less the actress who perturbs him than the creative flair she awakens in him.” Marcos Uzal, Vertigo, No. 33, 2008/1 

Jean Genet, A Song of Love. France, 1949-1950, digital, 25 min, B&W 

Two male prisoners in solitary confinement. One seeks bodily contact with his neighbour while others dance alone or remain prostrate on their straw mattress. The man’s desire soon turns to painful frustration, witnessed by the vigilant, perverse guard. 

Kenneth Anger, Fireworks. USA, 1947, 15 min, 16 mm, B&W 

“A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a 'light' and is drawn through the needle's eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to bed less empty than before.” Kenneth Anger 

 
Gregory J. Markopoulos, Charmides. USA, 1947-1948, 15 min, 16 mm, colour. 

Inspired by a dialogue of Plato, Charmides was designed as Part 3 of the trilogy Blood, Pleasure and Death (1947-1948), after Psyche and Lysis. The main character leaves the university campus, crosses a park and finds himself in an industrial wasteland, caught in a tangle of metal rods and concrete.  
From his first underground films which laid the foundations for new queer cinema in the late 1980s, to the experimental homoerotic and poetic films of the 1940s, Todd Haynes traces his way back to the sources of his film work and connects the dots.