Last year’s award is still waiting for Polanski.

US filmmaker and artist David Lynch is to receive the Film Award Cologne 2010 at a ceremony on Friday night as part of the Cologne Conference’s 20th edition.

The Euros 25,000 award, sponsored by the City of Cologne, Filmstiftung NRW and Cologne Conference, is presented “for excellence in the grammar and poetics of audiovisual media” and recognises film artists whose idiosyncratic influence is felt in the language of film.

Ahead of tonight’s award ceremony, Lynch will speak in a workshop discussion about his current projects as a photographer and painter.

This is the fourth year that the Film Award Cologne has been presented. Previous recipients were the screenwriter Paul Haggis, the Dardenne brothers and – in 2009 - Roman Polanski.

However, the Polish-born filmmaker was prevented from travelling to Cologne last year after being arrested at Zurich airport a few days before on the way to pick up an honorary award from the Zurich Film Festival and hold a master class for young filmmakers there

Polanski had intended to speak in a workshop discussion in Cologne about his new film The Ghostwriter with Cologne Conference co-founder Lutz Hachmeister.  In the light of the events in Zurich, Marina Zenovich’s documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired was shown in place of the discussion given the filmmaker’s incapacitation.

The Cologne Conference organization confirmed to Screen Daily today that Polanski has yet to travel to Cologne to collect his award and the cheque for Euros 25,000.

Meanwhile, David Lynch will travel to the town of Goslar in Germany’s Harz Mountains on October 9 to pick up the Goslar Kaiserring which is considered one of the most prestigious distinctions for visual artists worldwide.

This award has been in existence since 1976 and presented to such world-famous artists as Henry Moore, Christo, Jenny Holzer, Matthew Barney and Cindy Sherman.

The award to Lynch will be accompanied by an exhibition in Goslar’s Mönchehaus Museum until January 30 of his paintings, photographs, prints and drawings.

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