Fairfield filmmaker Graham Cooper shot his film “Atmanous” in his native state of Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of Graham Cooper.

With credits such as Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, film director David Lynch is known for his surrealist style.

Lynch’s vision is a guiding force in the film production graduate program at the Maharishi University in Fairfield. Maharishi graduate student Graham Cooper evokes Lynchian styles in his film “Atmanous”, which was selected by IPTV to be featured in “The Film Lounge” program next February. The 19-minute film was shot over five days in central Pennsylvania, but Cooper says editing was the longest part of the project, “The editing took a crazy-long time because the first cut was 40 minutes or something, and it’s just a matter of bringing it down and down and down and down.”

“Atmanous” is a term Cooper created to mean mountains, or many timelines, of one’s self. Cooper comments on his time at the Maharishi University, “It was such an insane learning experience. Our program was this whole kind of collaboration on a web series. Typically it’s like you have your own piece of film and you work on that and it’s a stand-alone thing. But we, all nine of us, collaborated on one project which is just impossible. With nine voices having all the same amount of control on something and caring as deeply about something as everyone else.”

Cooper says he’s proud of the web series they’ve created, titled “The Next Town Over”, which is currently being edited by Twin Peaks editor Duwayne Dunham. Cooper says he’s excited to see how his film “Atmanous” plays on IPTV next year. “Atmanous” can be viewed here.