Todd Haynes’s Early Works

Todd Haynes’s first film depicts Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s conflicted love. Light Industry noted, “Anticipating the concerns of Superstar, Poison, and Velvet Goldmine, it’s a Godardian essay that cannily plays with the artifice of its own student-film limitations, while reveling in the rough beauty of lo-fi production. The sounds of Iggy Pop and Throbbing Gristle are juxtaposed against fragments of a deadbeat costume-picture; elements from the lives of Genet and Fassbinder bleed into those of Rimbaud and Verlaine.” Also on the program is Dottie Gets Spanked, which Zeitgeist Films described as a “dazzling suburban phantasm . . . a stylized, bittersweet nod to [Haynes’s] childhood fascination with I Love Lucy.”