David Lynch: David Lean Lecture 2007

20 December 11

Watch the visionary filmmaker behind Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and The Elephant Man deliver the Academy's annual film lecture in 2007.

_{The full length David Lynch interview
video is available to watch now on BAFTA Guru.}

On 27 October 2007, the Academy welcomed David Lynch to 195 Piccadilly to deliver its annual David Lean Lecture.

A singular film director with a more diverse body of work than he is often given credit for, Lynch is a true American original. For more than 40 years he has remained on the artistic cutting edge of filmmaking, establishing a cinematic language of his own that famously combines an ambiguous narrative style with unsettling imagery.

The more abstract a thing gets, the more varied the interpretations. But people still know inside what it is for them.

Lynch's surreal first feature Eraserhead took years to perfect and became a classic on the 70s midnight scene. It paved the way for the BAFTA-nominated The Elephant Man (1980) and the seminal nightmare-in-suburbia Blue Velvet (1986). He was responsible for the cult TV hit Twin Peaks in the 1990s, and has since then developed his unmistakably abstract filmmaking style in Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and INLAND EMPIRE (2006).

In the full video - available now on BAFTA Guru - Lynch talks in depth about his past films and inspirations with interviewer Jason Barlow.