There is no greater joy than discovering some new detail about my favorite television show Twin Peaks. While researching newspaper articles Mark Frost and David Lynch’s groundbreaking series, I learned the pilot episode was shown at the 13th Annual Portland International Film Festival on February 23 and 24, 1990. I previous traced the history of where this first episode was shown prior to its debut on the ABC Television Network on April 8, 1990. Similar to other film festivals of the time, there are virtually no images or materials from these two screenings in Portland. Nevertheless, I have recapped what took place thanks to newspaper reports from the time.
WHAT IS THE PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL?
In March 1977, the Northwest Film Study Center and the Portland Movie house joined forces to hold the first Portland International Film Festival (PIFF). This first event saw the premieres of 32 films from 18 countries around the world. By 1981, Bill Foster stepped into an executive role for the Northwest Film Center and and helped grow both the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival and the International Film Festivals into nationally recognized events.
Foster would continue leading the organization and the event until his retirement in 2018. Following the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Northwest Film Center discontinued the event after the final one was held March 2021.
WHAT WAS THE 13TH ANNUAL PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL?
The 13th annual PIFF was held from February 15 through March 4, 1990. There were 60 films from 24 countries screened at four locations: the Oregon Art Institute’s Berg Swann Auditorium (1219 S.W. Park Avenue); Film Center; Cinema 21 theater (606 N.W. 21st Avenue); and the Movie House (1220 S.W. Taylor Street). That year, the festival was sponsored by the Oregon Art Institute’s Northwest Film & Video Center, with support from The Oregonian newspaper and KINK-FM. Bill Foster served as festival director.
While I’ve been unable to located collateral or ephemera from the festival in 1990, I did find an incredibly memorable and provocative video advertisement. Titled, “Foreign Food,” this advertising campaign was created by the ad agency Steve & Warren’s Excellent Ad Venture with art director Warren Eakins. It jokingly compared watching foreign-language films to trying unusual international delicacies such as a snake, a beetle, a dog, a bat’s leg, worms, and a bull’s testicles.
Opening night of the festival included a screening of Love At Large, a romantic comedy filmed in Portland and Bend, Oregon. Other notable films on the schedule that year included Italy’s The Icicle Thief, Camille Claudel from France, The Fountain from the former Soviet Union and Twin Peaks from American director David Lynch. Festival organizers also included eight early Ingrid Bergman films and a series of six children’s matinees. Cinema Paradiso closed the festival on March 4. It won a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and would later win an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1990.
‘TWIN PEAKS’ AT THE PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IN 1990
David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks pilot was a notable film for the Portland International Film Festival in 1990. By the time it arrived in Portland, the 90-minute episode had been screened at the Telluride Film Festival; Vancouver International Film Festival; Television Critics Association’s winter press tour; Cinematheque in Cleveland; Palm Springs Film Festival, and the Miami International Film Festival. The pilot was also released on home video in the United Kingdom on December 8, 1989.
One of the first articles about the 13th Annual Festival in Portland published in The Oregonian on January 25, 1990 mentioned “David Lynch’s new ‘Twin Peak’ [sic – Jean Renault must have contributed] starring Kyle MacLachlan.”
The Sunday Oregonian provided a synopsis about Frost and Lynch’s film in their multi-page story about the festival on February 11, 1990.
“Blue Velvet meets Peyton Place.” David Lynch’s newest vision of organic unease gurgles beneath the quiet face of a northwest logging town where health, industry and death go hand in hand. His latest trip to nether-world, co-written with Mark Frost, begins with the discovery of the plastic-wrapped body of a teenage girl and slowly rips away the veneer of apparent normalcy to reveal corruption in a seemingly middle-American town. The alpine lake community is a marvelously developed organism; at its cruel heart is a modern high school populated by fifties-style thugs and cheerleaders concealing secret lives. Kyle Maclachlan is the shrewd FBI man effusive to a tape recorder named Diane and gleeful about the tall trees and cherry pies. With characteristic visual daring, Lynch once again weaves a complex web of mystery. (90 mins.) Print courtesy of Lynch/Frost Productions.
A 35mm print of the Twin Peaks pilot was shown at the Film Center on Friday, February 23 at 7:00 p.m. and Saturday, February 24 at 3:00 p.m.
On February 23, The Oregonian highlighted the first screening of Twin Peaks in their Arts & Entertainment Guide. This included a blurb in the index:
PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The pilot of a David Lynch television series will show Friday at the start of the second weekend of the 13th Portland International Film Festival.
The Arts & Entertainment Guide contained a full page summary of the festival screenings on Friday, February 23 to Sunday, February 25. A second synopsis about Twin Peaks was included and the pilot received 3 1/2 stars by Ted Mahar from the Oregon newspaper.
“TWIN PEAKS” (U.S.):
Director David Lynch first greeted viewers with the engrossingly creepy “Eraserhead,” which was like a 90-min-ute black and white fever dream. “Dune” was simply an unmanageable project, but Lynch was back in stride with “Blue Velvet.”
“Twin Peaks” is the 90-minute first segment of a television series that seems too good to be true. It is a creepy crime melodrama with undertones of soap opera.
It begins when a high school cheerleader’s plastic-wrapped body is found. Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) investigates but soon has the aid of an FBI agent (Kyle MacLachlan) – a state line seems to have been crossed.
The FBI agent is alone but speaks familiarly into a tape recorder, always addressing “Diane.” He is intuitively shrewd about what is going to happen next, which is good, as his blandly overbearing manner might otherwise be alienating. His decorum slips at odd times, when he is marveling at the abundant trees or at the great doughnut spread laid out for the Twin Peaks police force The high schoolers, all played by actors too old for their roles, are a simmering stew of affairs, alliances and infidelities. So is the adult community. As this is a series, no clear-cut suspect is tagged.
It is a provocative first chapter, a bold mixture of sordid murders and satirical humor. ***½ 7 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. Saturday, FC.
The paper included a publicity photo of Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) posing on train tracks with two Bloodhounds. I love seeing these publicity photos in print months before the show aired on network television.
In a different section of the paper on February 23, Ted Mahar offered an even shorter synopsis:
“TWIN PEAKS” (U.S.A.): David Lynch’s engagingly creepy TV series pilot about serial murder in a tiny Northwest town. ***½ 3 p.m. FC.
According to an interview with Wendy Robie in The Oregonian on March 16, 1990, Wendy Robie who played Nadine Hurley attended one of the screenings in Portland.
“Robie first saw the pilot at the Portland International Film Festival, and can understand why some people have trouble following it,” wrote journalist Peter Farrell.
“The pilot is a lot more confusing than the particular episodes that follow,” Wendy said. “In the pilot they introduce all the characters, but in episodes those characters are fleshed out and it’s not quite so much zipping around.”
Today, the Northwest Film Center is known as Portland Art Museum Center for an Untold Tomorrow (PAM CUT). The organization changed names in March 2022 with the help of a local brand agency Skylight which did two things for the organization: “more closely aligns the center with the Portland Art Museum (which it’s been a part of since 1978), and formally expands its scope beyond short and feature films.”
You may recall they recent held a David Lynch weekend in mid-October 2026.
Did you see Twin Peaks at the Portland International Film Festival in February 1990? I’d love to hear about your experience. Hopefully photos from the weekend will turn up on day. For now, I’m happy to add this to the list of places where the pilot was shown before April 1990.
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