This screening featuring Blue Velvet (1986) will be introduced by film scholar Klaas de Zwaan, who will reflect on the importance of this surrealist classic at the time of Trump's America. In addition, this screening is a tribute to the recently deceased David Lynch.
Blue Velvet
The road to adulthood is a theme covered in many films, but rarely is it treated the way David Lynch did in his 1986 Blue Velvet. He paired the farewell of youthful innocence with a dark, surreal crime mystery. The film hit like a bomb, which was partly due to the fantastic acting of Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper. The music is by Angelo Badalamenti.
Student Jeffrey Beaumont (MacLachlan) has returned to his hometown of Lumberton, a neat and bourgeois town. On his way home, he finds a severed ear on a lawn. Naturally, he brings it to the police, where Inspector John Williams takes charge of the case. His daughter Sandy (Dern) manages to tell Jeffrey that the ear has something to do with the nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Rosselini). The two set out to investigate and come into contact with the utterly deranged Frank Booth (Hopper), a psychopath you'd rather avoid.