This is a real find: David Lynch waxing lyrical in a 1987 BBC Arena documentary about surrealist cinema. In a triumph of simplicity over budget, this is less a documentary in the traditional sense and more a clip show—but when it’s David Lynch introducing the clips, and when they’re clips from surrealist films and thus don’t suffer much from being shown without the context of the wider film, you have a recipe for a fascinating hour (nor thankfully do they suffer overmuch from being viewed on somewhat degraded ’90s videotape).
Lynch offers thoughts, musings and strange hand gestures about a number of filmmakers, including Jean Cocteau, Man Ray and Rene Clair. Also, he calls Philadelphia “one of the sickest, most corrupt, decadent, fear-ridden cities that exists.” Sorry about that, Philadelphians. Anyhow, until Lynch decides to make another film—something many people believe may now never happen—we can still enjoy this kind of thing from him. Watch below. [The Seventh Art]
Another day, another 3-hour David Lynch-related video I'll never have time to watch 🙁