Listening and Empathy: A Conversation with Todd Haynes

Name: Listening and Empathy: A Conversation with Todd Haynes
Start: 2025-02-17 17:00:00
Location: HAU1

Time: Feb 17th 2025
Location: HAU1
Guests: Todd Haynes moderated by Rajendra Roy

Few filmmakers working today know how to listen like Todd Haynes, and fewer still have understood just how crucial listening can be to power unforgettable stories. His characters are often marginalised drifters wrestling with identity crises, societal expectations, and the overwhelming power of their desires. Indeed, many of his indelible protagonists are women struggling to break free from restrictive environments, members of the LGBTQ+ community navigating hostile circumstances, or outsiders fighting to assert their right to exist in a world that leaves them little room to do that. In this career-spanning chat, the filmmaker reflects on his wondrous journey through the seventh art, some of his most essential films, and the significance that listening—to his collaborators, his creations, and his own intuitions—has played along the way.

Todd Haynes

Passionate about the visual arts since childhood, Todd Haynes studied art and semiotics at Brown University. In 1987, he created the medium-length film "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" with Barbie dolls. Since then, he has tirelessly continued to address questions of gender and identity. His first feature film "Poison", was released in 1991 and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. After "Safe" (1995), he conjured David Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust period in "Velvet Goldmine" (1998), then paid homage to Douglas Sirk in "Far from Heaven" (2002). In 2006, he had six actors play Bob Dylan in "I’m Not There" then directed the mini series "Mildred Pierce" (2011) before returning to film in 2015 with "Carol", then his Cannes selected film "Wonderstruck" (2017), followed by "Dark Waters" (2019), his award-winning music documentary T"he Velvet Underground", and his newest release, "May December" (2023).

Rajendra Roy

Rajendra Roy is the chief curator of film at MoMA New York, where he manages a collection of over 30,000 works and has created exhibitions on Pedro Almodóvar, Wim Wenders and Julia Reichert. He co-authored the book “The Berlin School: Films from the Berliner Schule”. He is a member of the selection committee for New Directors/New Films, presented with Film at Lincoln Center. In addition, he serves on the National Film Preservation Board, and co-chairs the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences International Film Award Executive Committee.