Blue Velvet Revisited

David Lynch was shooting Blue Velvet in 1986. The German filmmaker Peter Braatz was on the set at the time. He had a Super 8 camera with him. He gathered footage throughout the shoot. He took still photographs as well. That material did not surface for years. On the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Velvet, Braatz turned it into a film. What came out is not the usual making-of documentary. Braatz describes his own work as a meditation on Lynch. Dennis Hopper appears in the footage. So does Isabella Rossellini. Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern turn up too. Lynch himself is in front of the camera. Moving images and photographs stand side by side in the account. Peter Braatz’s eighty five minute documentary of 2016 is an American, German and Slovenian coproduction.