Belgrade Celebrates 30 years of D. Lynch's Blue Velvet

Belgrade celebrates 30th anniversary of a brilliant, cult movie Blue Velvet (David Lynch). Its first, world celebration was on the BFI London Film Festival in October, the second was on LIFFE International Film Festival in Ljubljana, just couple days ago and on 23th of November it will be on a region film manifestation called Days of Slovenian Film www.danislovenackogfilma.org

30 years ago, 1985, Lynch invited Peter Braatz, a young German filmmaker and punk musician, to come to the set and produce a documentary about filmmaking of his cult film Blue Velvet. Braatz, then shoot on his Super 8 interviews with the famous cast – Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLashlan and composed it along with set footage and many pictures that came along. Blue Velvet Revisited was kept hidden for years, hidden and forgotten, to be recreated, revisited and brought back to life in Ljubljana as Slovenian-German (Bela Film/Taris Film) co-production. Since the film first time came to life on London BFI premier, gloriously as it should, with presence of many film and music stars (such as Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, John Malkovich etc) including of course David Lynch, it will be awaken again on a Days of Slovenian Film (Dani slovenackog filma), with the presence of regional (ex Yugoslavia) representatives, Kinoteka and Film Centre representatives from Slovenia, Slovenian producers team and film authors. Second edition of Day of Slovenian Films, which is a festival organized by Association of Slovenian Minority SAVA in Serbia, in partnership with Jugoslovenska Kinoteka www.kinoteka.org.rs, Slovenian Kinoteka www.kinoteka.si, Film Centre of Slovenia www.film-center.si and Serbian Film Centres is set in the magnificent brand new building of Jugoslovenska Kinoteka in Belgrade, Serbia (biggest archive of old, classic, cinematography films in Europe).

With the aim to present a brand new Slovenian film production, Braatz's film Blue Velvet Revisited has the honor to represent the iconic, powerful film study of D.Lynch and his Blue Velvet, again revisited in brand new clothing, as magnificent work of Peter Braatz. Braatz, once director of music documentaries, keen musician and Wim Wender's assistant on music videos in 80s, now a filmmaker living in Ljubljana and working at Slovenian film production company Bela Film.

Lynch's walking- in -dreams, documented by Peter Braatz, celebrates the 30th anniversary of one of the most twisted and unique study case films of the 1980s, with the unforeseen footage and several delights for the biggest fans of American director David Lynch. It is hard to appreciate the film, unless you have seen the original, otherwise it remains unclear. And who did not see Lynch's most important work? The documentary ritualizes the filmmaker’s working style and his holding on to sensitivity of brilliant actors. Denis Hopper said that film reflects “living on the edge of subconscious. People have those subconscious feelings. In our own dream those things exist. In reality too, but hopefully we don’t see them. Lynch is wonderfully naive”. A little thing that tells how much Hopper understood his character Frank. The film shows Lynch’s mixes with images and a skillful, instinctive and graduate crew building the set. It is the most welcoming and brilliant insight of the filmmaking process of a genius. The idea of the film came from the song Blue Velvet (Tony Bennett & k.d. lang) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3i2F7eKoKQ Beside the usual film crew Lynch had an interesting and intriguing musicians working on the project, which is exactly where Braatz comes to, as much as twisted or strange the film was, in the editing room. Lynch has said that the film’s central metaphor and portal to this small-town underworld he has got from Bobby Vinton’s 1960s version of the song. “There was something mysterious about it,” he said. “It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns—lawns and the neighborhood.”

D. Lynch wanted to be a painter http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/arts/design/exploring-david-lynchs-pai...

Well, Braatz’s interviews with Lynch reveals all sorts of ideas and attitudes that became his characteristics in further filmmaking. A bit like Tony Scott at the beginning of his career (in The Hunger). Truly subconscious piece of work, full of symbols to explore, an open door to another world. Lynch explains that “beneath the appearance many strange things can happen”. It is also said that Blue Velvet Revisited is a window crack into Lynch’s creativity, due to a plenty of hidden symbols.

More about brand new productions from Slovenia and Slovenian Cinematography later.