People
Todd Haynes
Directing · follow into films and chains
Biography
Todd Haynes (/heɪnz/; born January 2, 1961; Los Angeles) is an American filmmaker. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender roles. Haynes first gained public attention with his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), which chronicles singer Karen Carpenter's life and death, using Barbie dolls as actors. Superstar became a cult classic. Haynes's feature directorial debut, Poison (1991), a provocative exploration of AIDS-era queer perceptions and subversions, established him as a figure of a new transgressive cinema. Poison won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize and is regarded as a seminal work of New Queer Cinema. Haynes received further acclaim for his second feature film, Safe (1995), a symbolic portrait of a housewife who develops multiple chemical sensitivity. Safe was later voted the best film of the 1990s by The Village Voice Film Poll. His next feature, Velvet Goldmine (1998), is a tribute to the 1970s glam rock era. The film received the Special Jury Prize for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Haynes gained acclaim and a measure of mainstream success with Far from Heaven (2002) earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He continued to direct critically lauded films such as I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015), Wonderstruck (2017) and Dark Waters (2019). He directed his first feature-length documentary, The Velvet Underground (2021). Haynes directed and co-wrote the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011) for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
The Melodrama They Never Let Us Keep
Rachel Morrison's Love of Your Life arrives as a reminder: the woman's picture was never a lesser form. It was grief, desire and colour, and the Europeans knew...
8 films
Neon Fog and the Long Way Home
From Thief's rain-slicked streets to Drive's neon avenues, a journey through neo-noir night drives where every turn tests the driver's moral compass.
8 films
The Show Must Go On
From Freddie Mercury's operatic excess to the raw defiance of punk, this chain traces how cinema captures the transformative power of self-expression.
8 films
The Open Road Reclaimed - Women Who Drive Away
From the dust of the American West to the neon of Tokyo, these eight films trace a lineage of women who take to the road not to flee, but to find themselves.
5 films
Topics
Explore by topic
Related people
