Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon have been working together since Poison, her first feature as producer and his first as director. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 as well as a Teddy, the official queer award of the Berlin Film Festival. Dennis Lim has cited the film in The New York Times as “the inciting spark” for what came to be known as the New Queer Cinema. Vachon and Haynes’s partnership has continued and flourished through theatrical and television features as well as music videos and documentary work, including their latest, Wonderstruck, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Explore the full range of their fruitful collaboration and the gems that inspired this landmark team.

Modern Cinema, co-presented by SFMOMA and SFFILM, is an ongoing film series exploring the dynamic forces interacting between cinema’s past and present.

Modern Cinema’s Founding Supporters are Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein. Support is provided by Nion T. McEvoy and the Susan Wildberg Morgenstein Fund. This season of Modern Cinema is generously supported by James C. Hormel and Michael P. Nguyen.