David Lynch

David King Lynch born January 20 1946 is an American filmmaker painter visual artist musician actor and writer Known for his surrealist films he has developed his own unique cinematic style which has been dubbed Lynchian and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound design Indeed the surreal and in many cases violent elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they disturb offend or mystify their audiences Moving around various parts of the United States as a child within his middle class family Lynch went on to study painting in Philadelphia where he first made the transition to producing short films Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium he moved to Los Angeles where he produced his first motion picture the surrealist horror Eraserhead 1977 After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit Lynch was employed to direct The Elephant Man 1980 from which he gained mainstream success Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group he proceeded to make two films First the sciencefiction epic Dune 1984 which proved to be a critical and commercial failure and then a neonoir crime film Blue Velvet 1986 which was highly critically acclaimed Proceeding to create his own television series with Mark Frost the highly popular murder mystery Twin Peaks 19901992 he also created a cinematic prequel Fire Walk With Me 1992 a road movie Wild at Heart 1990 and a family film The Straight Story 1999 in the same period Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking three of his following films worked on dream logic nonlinear narrative structures Lost Highway 1997 Mulholland Drive 2001 and Inland Empire 2006 Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director for his films The Elephant Man Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and also received a screenplay Academy Award nomination for The Elephant Man Lynch has twice won Frances César Award for Best Foreign Film as well as the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival The French government awarded him the Legion of Honor the countrys top civilian honor as a Chevalier in 2002 and then an Officier in 2007 while that same year The Guardian described Lynch as the most important director of this era Allmovie called him the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking whilst the success of his films have led to him being labelled the first popular Surrealist