Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes heɪnz born January 2 1961 Los Angeles is an American filmmaker His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of wellknown 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 Carpenters life and death using Barbie dolls as actors Superstar became a cult classic Hayness feature directorial debut Poison 1991 a provocative exploration of AIDSera queer perceptions and subversions established him as a figure of a new transgressive cinema Poison won the Sundance Film Festivals 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 Im Not There 2007 Carol 2015 Wonderstruck 2017 and Dark Waters 2019 He directed his first featurelength documentary The Velvet Underground 2021 Haynes directed and cowrote the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce 2011 for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards