We pay tribute to the late David Lynch with a programme presenting nine of his feature films and a collection of his short films. “Lynch, more than any filmmaker of his time, faced down carefully argued lies and reckoned with the burden of alienated identities. Many films are called revelatory and visionary, but Lynch’s films seem made to exemplify these terms. He sees what’s kept invisible and reveals what’s kept scrupulously hidden, and his visions shatter veneers of respectability to depict, in fantasy form, unbearable realities.” – Richard Brody

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The Short Films

A collection of Lynch's short films from the first 29 years of his career.

Six Men Getting Sick, 1967, 4 min
Six men getting sick. 

The Alphabet, 1968, 4 min
A sick woman’s nightmare of living representations of the alphabet.

The Grandmother, 1970, 34 min
A young boy plants some strange seeds which grow into a grandmother.

The Amputee, Version 1 and 2, 1974, 9 min
A double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.

Premonitions Following an Evil Deed, 1995, 1 min
Police discover a naked dead body.

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Eraserhead
David Lynch, 1977, 89 min

“David Lynch’s infamously enigmatic cult classic Eraserhead launched the director’s wild odyssey of a career thanks to a second release on the midnight movie circuit. His first feature was an independently made labour of love and utterly unique invention born from several years of work on and off, depending upon the ebb and flow of funds. With sets echoing a vaguely mid-century industrial nowhere, the black and white introspective nightmare features Jack Nance’s mild-mannered Henry Spencer struggling in a bleak life with his girlfriend and their unplanned “baby.” Punctuated by sparse dialogue with the stilted delivery of an early talkie, the film is an alternate universe of skewed nostalgia where Eros and Thanatos find their unnervingly neurotic, beautiful and absurd expression, both visually and through an intricate, eerie soundtrack. Many Lynchian signatures and tropes – even the carpet pattern of the Red Room in Twin Peaks – were born in this formative, singular work of art.” – Harvard Film Archive

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The Elephant Man
David Lynch, 1980, 124 min

“With this poignant second feature, David Lynch brought his atmospheric visual and sonic palette to a notorious true story set in Victorian England. When the London surgeon Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) meets the freak-show performer John Merrick (John Hurt), who has severe skeletal and soft-tissue deformities, he assumes that he must be intellectually disabled as well. As the two men spend more time together, though, Merrick reveals the intelligence, gentle nature, and profound sense of dignity that lie beneath his shocking appearance, and he and Treves develop a friendship. Shot in gorgeous black and white and boasting a stellar supporting cast that includes Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, and Wendy Hiller, The Elephant Man was nominated for eight Academy Awards, cementing Lynch’s reputation as one of American cinema’s most visionary talents.” – Janus Films

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Dune
David Lynch, 1984, 136 min

Following a notorious aborted attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1970s, Frank Herbert's bestselling sci-fi epic Dune finally made it to the big screen as the third film by David Lynch, featuring an all-star cast that includes several of Lynch's regular collaborators. The year is 10,191, and four planets are embroiled in a secret plot to wrest control of the Spice Melange, the most precious substance in the universe and found only on the planet Arrakis. A feud between two powerful dynasties, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, is manipulated from afar by ruling powers that conspire to keep their grip on the spice. As the two families clash on Arrakis, Duke Atreides son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, in his screen debut) finds himself at the centre of an intergalactic war and an ancient prophecy that could change the galaxy forever. Though its initial reception ensured that Lynch largely eschewed mainstream filmmaking for the rest of his career, Dune has since been rightly re-evaluated as one of the most startlingly original and visionary science fiction films of the 1980s.

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Blue Velvet
David Lynch, 1986, 120 min

“Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their person of interest, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) – and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the late twentieth century.” – Janus Films

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Wild at Heart
David Lynch, 1990, 125 min

“With its good and wicked witches, and references to Toto and the yellow brick road, Wild at Heart (based on Bay Area writer Barry Gifford’s homonymous novel) is an overt, elaborate homage to The Wizard of Oz, a “road movie” before the term existed. Lula (Laura Dern) and Sailor (Nicolas Cage) set out from Cape Fear, North Carolina, in a Ford Thunderbird, headed for the obligatory Oz of California but end up detained in the Texas hellhole of Big Tuna. In many ways conceived in direct opposition to Blue Velvet, the film is anxious and scattered where the earlier film was contained and claustrophobic; where sex in Blue Velvet is wrapped up in guilt and terror, this film is as close as Lynch has come to a celebration of libidinal energies.” – Film Society of Lincoln Centre

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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
David Lynch, 1992, 135 min

“In the town of Twin Peaks, everybody has their secrets – but no one more than Laura Palmer. In this prequel to his groundbreaking 1990s television series, David Lynch resurrects the teenager found wrapped in plastic at the beginning of the show, following her through the last week of her life and teasing out the enigmas that surround her murder. Homecoming queen by day and drug-addicted thrill seeker by night, Laura leads a double life that pulls her deeper and deeper into horror as she pieces together the identity of the assailant who has been terrorizing her for years. Nightmarish in its vision of an innocent torn apart by unfathomable forces, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is nevertheless one of Lynch’s most humane films, aching with compassion for its tortured heroine – a character as enthralling in life as she was in death.” – Janus Films

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Lost Highway
David Lynch, 1997, 134 min

“Most of Lynch’s later films straddle (at least) two realities, and their most ominous moments arise from a dawning awareness that one world is about to cede to another. In Lost Highway, we are introduced to brooding jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) while he lives in a simmering state of jealousy with his listless and possibly unfaithful wife Renee (Patricia Arquette). About one hour in, a rupture fundamentally alters the narrative logic of the film and the world itself becomes a nightmare embodiment of a consciousness out of control. Lost Highway marked a return from the wilderness for Lynch and the arrival of his more radical expressionism – alternating omnipresent darkness with overexposed whiteouts, dead air with the belligerent soundtrack assault of metal-industrial bands, and the tactile sensations that everything is happening with the infinite delusions of schizophrenic thought.” – Film Society of Lincoln Centre

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Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, 2001, 147 min

"Like Billy Wilder’s film named after another iconic Hollywood street, Mulholland Drive tells a sordid tale of the industry of illusion and its boulevards of broken dreams – but for Lynch, these dreams fold into dreams within dreams within dreams. (…) When the perky, wholesome Betty Elms lands in Hollywood for what could be her big break, she meets “Rita,” an ostensible femme fatale who is rendered identity-less because of amnesia from a car accident. Lynch’s (and Hollywood’s) dazzling dream factory sets to work with mysterious objects, startling visions, amusing detours and revelatory alterations in acting styles and character identities. The noir cracks open and gives way to a multi-toned, terrifyingly beautiful hallucination that is as much a complex reflection on Hollywood as it is an endlessly transforming psychological puzzle. Cinematic archetypes – including all versions of the female presented or rejected by Hollywood – double, reflect and regenerate into uncanny metaphors in Lynch’s subconscious minefield where the fluid layers of identity, nostalgia, desire, deception and projection could be in the minds of the characters, the audience, or a complete fabrication by dark, unknown forces behind the scenes… or well beyond." – Harvard Film Archive

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Inland Empire
David Lynch, 2006, 180 min

““Strange, what love does.” The role of a lifetime, a Hollywood mystery, a woman in trouble… David Lynch’s first digitally shot feature makes visionary use of the medium to weave a vast meditation on the enigmas of time, identity, and cinema itself. Featuring a tour de force performance from Laura Dern as an actor on the edge, this labyrinthine Dream Factory nightmare tumbles down an endless series of unfathomably interconnected rabbit holes as it takes viewers on a hallucinatory odyssey into the deepest realms of the unconscious mind.” – Janus Films