DAVID LYNCH – Movie Director

(Missoula, Montana, U.S.A., 1946 – )

David Lynch , the first of three children, was born on January 20, 1946 in Montana, where his father worked for the Forestry Service of the State. The young Lynch spent most of his time in the woods with his father who brought him often along on expeditions on the mountains of the area. The Lynch family moved because of work and changed its location several times going from place to place from Idaho, to Spokane, to Durham, to North Carolina, until when in 1961 they moved to Alexandria (Virginia). The young Lunch was filled with awe at the dimensions of the city, as he was used to live in small towns in the woods. After two years he enlisted with the Corcoran School of Art of Washington, and then at the Boston Museum School. In 1965 he went to Saltzburg to study with expressionist painter Oskar Kokischka, but went back to the United States after only fifteen days, declaring that in Europe there was no more inspiration left to pursue the work that he intended to do. Back in Alexandria, he began to work in the most disparate professions to support himself while studying. In 1967 he made his first animated movie: “Six Men Getting Sick”. David Lynch in the following years showed himself to be an artist of the most diverse interests, of great ability and noteworthy talent. He went without effort from cinema to painting, to furniture design to television, from advertising spots to cinematographic production. The success and awards that he received demonstrate his exceptional gifts. He never abandoned his first passion, and he exhibited his paintings in famous galleries worldwide. Praised for the human aspects of The Elephant Man (1980, eight Oscar nominations) and for the delicate themes in Sailor and Lula (1990), it was though with the uninhibited film Blue Velvet with Isabella Rossellini of 1986 and mainly with the TV series of 1990 Twin Peaks (aired until 1992) that David Lynch gained notoriety with the public and the critics. Wild at Heart received a Golden Palm award in Cannes in 1990 as best movie. In 1991 he composed together with Angelo Badalmenti a piece of the soundtrack of the movie Until the end of the world directed by Wim Wenders. In 1993 he directed for Barilla France the spot Le Café in Piazza Navona with Gérard Depardieu.

Giancarlo Gonizzi

Bibliography

ZANETTI Alberto, David Lynch, visioni perdute (David Lynch, Lost Visions), Parma, Edicta for the City of Parma, 2000.