‘We found love at the David Lynch fest'
Annual festival returns to London Irish Centre in Camden Town
Friday, 30th August 2024 — By Frankie Lister-Fell
A COUPLE of David Lynch superfans got married after meeting in a queue for autographs at a film festival that is set to return to Camden next month.
Graphic designer and burlesque dancer Sally Andersen Ward told the New Journal it “felt like yesterday” that she met theatre-maker and magician Anton Binder at the festival.
Fans from around the world are coming to the two-day UK David Lynch Festival – “A Gathering of the Angels” – at the Camden Irish Centre.
The experience will include a resident tattoo artist from Los Angeles who will bring fans’ Lynchian designs to life, live performances from a burlesque group, a secret bar recreating the Slow Club in Blue Velvet, a Mulholland Drive jitterbug class, Twin Peaks bingo (“Twingo”), puzzle rooms, and panels featuring creators and actors from the films.
Ms Andersen Ward said: “People often talk about love at first sight… we met multiple times over the first day at various things we were queuing up for autographs together and said ‘hi’.
“It was an intimate crowd so you could talk to everybody.
“The same evening I was at the bar, he came up to me and asked ‘how’s your Black Yukon Soccer Punch drink [a cocktail drunk by locals in Twin Peaks]?’”
Mr Binder said: “She was cosplaying as Audrey Horne, from the show, and she did an amazing job.
“I was very impressed so I thought, I’ve got to talk to her.”
Ms Anderson Ward said: “I was wearing her classic outfit which is a red jumper, tartan skirt and tie.
“It’s all in the small details. Her shoes are very unique, they are saddle shoes.
“She’s got a beauty mark on the side of her eyes and I had a fake cigarette.”
“The same evening we posed together in the glass box, which they recreated for the festival.
“That was before we knew we’d end up being together.”
An installation at The Gathering of Angels
Ms Anderson Ward, who is from Denmark, spent the next week going for drinks with Mr Binder and then travelled to his hometown of Brighton.
The following year they went to Snoqualmie in Washington to visit all the locations where Twin Peaks was filmed.
After doing long- distance from Denmark to the UK, Mr Binder moved to Copenhagen and they got married in July 2022.
Mr Binder said: “We talk about a lot of things, but because of Twin Peaks we will never run out of stuff to talk about.
“You can always find new things, when you revisit it, which we do once a year or so.
“We rewatch it. You discover new things depending on where you are in your life. We’re big fans.”
Lindsey Bowden, organiser of the event, described the experience as “a film festival meets Comic Con, meets immersive, meets everything”.
Cosplay is a “huge part” of the event, Ms Bowden said, with fans previously going to great lengths to emulate their favourite scenes and characters – from the blue rose in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me movie to electricity, which she said “is a big David Lynch thing”.
Twin Peaks actors Eamon Farren (Richard Horne) and Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Brigg) will be in attendance, alongside Mr Lynch’s long-term producer Sabrina Sutherland, as well as “secret surprises”.
Ms Bowden ran the Twin Peaks Festival in London for a decade before Covid put the event on pause.
She said: “I’ve never been out to make a profit from this. It’s always just been about bringing people together.
We’ve united people from all over the world [fans have travelled from Japan, South Africa and Australia], and they’ve become lifelong friends.
“Some of them have got married, and I think that’s the best reward that you can have.”
Ms Bowden said returning to the Irish Centre “felt a bit like coming home”. She added: “I really like the Irish Centre. We took the Twin Peaks UK festival there and they were so brilliant to work with.
“I love Camden anyway – I think because I worked at the Round- house for so long.
“And I know the area really well. I used to hang out there when I was younger and living in London.”
