Todd Haynes, right, with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers on the set of Velvet Goldmine.

October 6, 2000

From Suicide to Goldmine

Director Todd Haynes will discuss his work at Wexner

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-Visionary queer director Todd Haynes will be visiting the Wexner Center for the Arts with a retrospective of his films being screened there in October.

The films Haynes made in the 1990s include some of that decade's most provocative works-among them Safe, Velvet Goldmine, and the movie that first brought Haynes national attention, Poison. That extraordinary film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

It also made Haynes an unwitting player in the "culture wars" of the early 1990s when it was denounced on the floor of Congress. His works are varied in subject—from '60s suburbia to '70s glam rock to modern isolation-but unified by the compassion he extends to his characters.

In addition to premiering his films in Columbus, the Wexner Center also commissioned a video installation by Haynes in 1997: Domestic Violence, created with his producer, Christine Vachon, and featured in the exhibition "Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film Since 1945."

The Suicide (1978)

Assassins (1985)

Dottie Gets Spanked (1994)

Friday, October 6

Concluding the evening is a film chosen by Haynes, the astonishing Un Chant d'Amour (1950), French writer Jean Genet's only foray into filmmaking-an erotic and autobiographical reverie of men behind bars.

Poison (1990)

Saturday, October 7

Poison weaves together three separate stories, a '50s-style sci-fi thriller, a modern tabloid news show about a boy who kills his father, and a stylized love story between two imprisoned inmates. It signaled the emergence of the "new queer cinema" that enlivened indie film culture of the '90s.

Concluding the evening is Haynes's choice of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973).

A Conversation with Todd Haynes

Friday, October 13

In an onstage conversation with film clips Todd Haynes provides an inside look at his remarkable body of work. Discussing his career with Wexner Center media arts curator Bill Horrigan, Haynes will also address the challenges of independent film production.

Safe (1995)

Friday, October 20

Described as "a horror film with no violence," Haynes's Safe stars Julianne Moore as Carol White, a homemaker in the San Fernando Valley who inexplicably begins to show signs of allergies to virtually her entire environment. Safe offers a haunting commentary on modern illness, isolation, and belief systems.

Haynes has chosen exiled director Max Ophuls's The Reckless Moment (1949) for the second film of the evening.

Velvet Goldmine (1998) Friday, October 27

Suggested by incidents in the lives and careers of such stars as David Bowie and Iggy Pop, Velvet Goldmine-Haynes's dazzling evocation of '70s glam rock culture is also an intricately layered look at celebrity, fame, and fandom. With Ewan MacGregor, Christian Bale, and Toni Collette. Haynes has chosen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) to conclude the evening.

All events begin at 7 pm, at the Wexner Center Film-Video Theater, 1871 N. High St. (at 15th Avenue), on the campus of Ohio State University; 614-292-3535. ✓

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