Heather Haynes has a long history of producing innovative, politically focused projects in visual and performance arts, film/documentary and theatre. She focuses on presenting works dealing with social justice and cultural issues to engage and inspire meaningful dialogues with audiences.

Heather Haynes is a Senior International Programmer at Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival, former International Programmer for imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival, has served on numerous film juries and work in progress film labs in Mexico, Central and South America, including the Locarno Open Doors Labs and has served for a number of years, as a reader for Chicken & Egg Pictures’ (Egg)celerator Labs. She has co-written and produced three award winning feature documentaries. In addition to her film work, she is the founding collective member of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto and founder of Culture Storm, an art production organization whose work has included notable artists such as James Luna, Tantoo Cardinal and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. She was the founder and Artistic Director of Toronto Free Gallery and former publisher of Fuse Magazine. Currently she is in production on an upcoming performance art film in collaboration with Dana Claxton and Jeneen Frei Njootli based on James Luna’s performance piece Ishi and is in development on a feature fiction film.

She resides in Toronto with her inspiring daughter Saylor Perez-Haynes.