The Atkinson Forum in American Studies and Cornell Cinema present
A Tribute to Todd Haynes
featuring an evening with filmmaker Todd Haynes
including a screening of I’m Not There
and a live interview with
Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman
(SOLD OUT) Saturday, March 29, 7:00, Willard Straight Theatre, Free
Cornell Cinema and the Atkinson Forum are happy to present a tribute to indie filmmaker Todd Haynes on Saturday, March 29. Haynes broke onto the film scene in 1987 with Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a biopic of the anorexic 70s singer acted out by Barbie and Ken dolls (and a film that was pulled from distribution after threats of lawsuit from the Carpenter family). His follow-up was no less controversial: Poison, a triptych of social and sexual transgressions that won the Sundance Film Festival, became one of the defining works of the New Queer Cinema movement, and incited conservative senators who were apoplectic over the thought of NEA funding being used for such purposes.
He became a more mainstream filmmaker with his late 1990s films Safe,
considered by many one of the best films of the 1990s, which served both
as allegory for an AIDS-devastated community and as gripping environmental
fable, and Velvet Goldmine, a fascinating exploration of
the glam rock era, and especially the transgendered persona of David Bowie.
His breakthrough work was the Oscar-nominated, Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama Far From Heaven, the story of a 50s-era housewife who begins an affair with her black gardener after discovering her husband is gay.
In
2007 he released the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, which
continued his trajectory and upped the ante.
By exploring the outsized persona of this American icon through six different
avatars (none with the same name, all played by very different actors, including
an 11-year-old African-American boy and a woman), he has given us one of
the most unexpectedly rich portraits of an artist seen on screen, wrapped
up in an equally unexpected structure. Called “The movie of the year” by
J. Hoberman in the Village Voice, and sitting on many critics’
lists of 2007, it is an inspired work of a talented artist and intellectual.
From March 24–28, Cornell Cinema presents a complete retrospective of his career, culminating in a special program on Saturday, March 29, when Mr. Haynes will introduce I’m Not There, and be interviewed following the screening by Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman. Tickets for this event are free, and will be distributed from the Willard Straight Ticket Desk and the Ticket Center at the Clinton House downtown starting Monday, March 24 (limit 2 per person). A Tribute to Todd Haynes was made possible with the generous support of the Atkinson Forum in American Studies.