Directed by David Lynch

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque mourns, alongside the global film community, the passing of visionary artist and filmmaker David Lynch. One of the pioneers of American independent cinema, Lynch spent the most creative years of his life reimagining the depths and limits of cinema, contemplating the medium’s undefinable place amid the hauntingly beautiful dreamscapes that surround our reality.

Beginning his artistic journey as a painter, Lynch first found himself enamored with cinema when he looked at one of his paintings and imagined what would happen if what he was looking at was unstill—he felt compelled to paint a moving picture. What culminated from this curiosity was his first of many inventive and surreal short films, “The Alphabet.” Lynch continued to explore his visual language, a perfect combination of surrealism and minimalism and what would become a singular voice of the medium, with iconic films such as ERASERHEAD and THE ELEPHANT MAN featuring imagery simultaneously shockingly, terrifyingly and everlastingly beautiful.

Lynch’s partnership with actor Kyle MacLachlan is one of the most prominent filmmaker-actor pairings in recent memory. First collaborating on Lynch’s vision of author Frank Herbert’s DUNE, their partnership soared to unparalleled heights with the unforgettable BLUE VELVET, TWIN PEAKS and TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, cultural touchstones that transcend any one generation. Continuing his exploration of the violence beneath the surface of American life, WILD AT HEART investigates the post-traumatic response to such brutality. Decades of desperately fighting for creative autonomy within a film industry he found to be hesitant in taking artistic risks left Lynch understandably cynical, not only about the structures he found himself constrained by, but also the city that fostered it. His “Los Angeles Trilogy,” consisting of LOST HIGHWAY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE and INLAND EMPIRE, interrogates the artifice of Los Angeles, the invisible powers which pull the strings and the evils that lurk beneath the glossy, bright lights of the city where dreams are supposedly made. The term “Lynchian” will forever be used to describe the cinematic representations of the intersections between the ominous and the mundane, the dreamlike and the nightmarish. Nevertheless, Lynch believed in the enduring spirit of humanity, the triumph of light over darkness, as observable in THE STRAIGHT STORY, a film less traditionally Lynchian, but with the heart of David Lynch painted all over it.