One of America's most innovative and respected filmmakers, a man who for two years in the early 90's had much of America dying to know who killed Laura Palmer, will be honoured in Bratislava with a mini-film festival of five of his movies at film club 901.
Writer-director David Lynch, born in Montana in 1946, originally had ambitions of becoming a graphic artist. But in 1966 he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he made his first animated film depicting the dark corners of the human experience, violence and decay. The piece immediately caught the public's eye.
In 1972, his first feature-length film Eraserhead marked a colossal critical success, which brought him to the top of avantgarde film-making and acceptance into the Hollywood mainstream. It began a run of nearly 30 years in which he won acclaim for films such as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and his most recent effort The Straight Story.
The first film to be screened at the festival, The Straight Story is an endearing and visually stunning film about 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), a hobbling midwesterner who journeys hundreds of miles on a John Deere lawn mower in order to visit his dying older brother, Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). Along the way Alvin meets a pregnant runaway teenager, a sad World War II veteran, and a sympathetic priest, all of whom marvel at his unflinching spirit and belief in the power of family love.
Lynch has also worked in music and television. In 1990, the evening soap opera Twin Peaks saga began when the corpse of town sweetheart Laura Palmer (Sheryll Fenn) was discovered wrapped in plastic in a small Pacific northwest town. Two full seasons later, the wildly successful show culminated with the killer's unlikely identity revealed as the evil spirit Bob, who was, at the time of the murder, in Mr. Palmer's body.
Twin Peaks also spawned the film Fire Walk with Me, a bizzare, eye-brow raising affair which explained events leading up to Laura Palmer's death.
Five of Lynch's films will be played in Filmclub 901 (in the Pedagogic Faculty building) on Račianska 59. Tickets cost no more than 40 Sk, two performances are for free for club cardholders, which can be bought at the door for 50 Sk. In English with Slovak subtitles.
