Todd Haynes

He was born in South California and studied arts at Brown Uniersity. He made his first short film in 1978, The suicide. He settled in New York where he founded Apparatus Production with Barry Ellsworth and Christine Vachon. He made a medium length film Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story, awarded in San Francisco and the USA Film Festival. He directed his first feature film in 1990; he won grand prize in Sundance and many awarded in international festivals. He made a short film Dottie Gets Spanked for PBS TV channel. He initiated Gran Fury, a group of artists fighting against AIDS. His work was awarded at the Whitney Biennial.