Todd Haynes

Born in California in 1961, Todd Haynes presently belongs, alongside Kelly Reichardt and Gus Van Sant, to a family of independent American film-makers raised in the heart of counter-culture.

His entire body of work (which began at the age of 17 with the provocatively-entitled short film The Suicide) is a meticulous undermining of the founding myths of America. With Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a medium-length film using Barbie dolls as actors to present a stark biography of the iconic singer (completed in 1987 but banned on release), then Safe (1995, his second medium-length and the beginning of a long collaboration with actress Julianne Moore), Haynes, who is openly homosexual, questions and seeks to go beyond social, sexual and artistic norms.

Todd Haynes sees film-making as the art of artifice and is renowned for his flamboyant direction. By combining a fascination for the subject and the power of film, he has explored the most eminent figures of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Arthur Rimbaud, Jean Genet, Bob Dylan or the Velvet Underground, as well as glam rock with Velvet Goldmine (1998), or Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama with Far from Heaven (2002). Through these figures, Todd Haynes examines identities and assignations, their construction and de-construction. In 2015, he directed Carol, which won the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.

To date, he has made 16 films and is about to release his latest feature film, May December. 

A night with Todd Haynes

 Cinema  Screening

As part of Moviment and Museums Night, the American filmmaker Todd Haynes presents, for one night only, three of his early short and medium-length films, each of them rare or unique: Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (1985, 41 min), Dottie Gets Spanked (1993, 27 min) and a surprise film. He will also show three films from the Centre Pompidou, specially chosen by him: Un chant d’amour by Jean Genet (1949-1950, 25 min), Fireworks by Kenneth Anger (1947, 15 min) and Charmides by Gregory J. Markopoulos (1947-1948, 15 min). 

In this way, Todd Haynes traces a lineage back from his own work – his early underground films, which laid the foundations for new queer cinema in the late 80s – to one of its sources: the experimental homoerotic and poetic masterpieces of the 1940s.

Screenings, Saturday 13 May 2023

In the presence of the filmmaker

As part of retrospective "Todd Haynes" from 10 to 29 May 2023 at Centre Pompidou.