The Best Films You've Never Seen: A Night of Surrealist Cinema

Overview

David Lynch's films and television shows should never be far from a screen, but it's been 17 years since his last new movie and six since he brought back Twin Peaks. Thankfully, the inimitable filmmaker is a favourite of retrospective programmers. Lynch's work isn't always gracing a cinema somewhere around Melbourne, but it's rarely far away in all of its wild and wonderful glory.

Movies don't get much more Lynchian than Mulholland Drive, which is the latest of the director's masterpieces to get a-flickering again, this time at The Capitol on Tuesday, July 18. This shimmering neo-noir is showing as part of the latest entry in The Best Films You've Never Seen series, this time badged A Night of Surrealist Cinema. Hopefully you have indeed watched this Los Angeles-set tale starring Naomi Watts as a wide-eyed aspiring actor, and hopefully you've even caught it on the silver screen — but whether you have or not, this is a golden opportunity.

It's the film that scored Lynch his third Best Director Oscar nomination, plus a Best Director win at Cannes. In dreams, it lingers long after you've seen it. And, heading along to this 6.30pm session will only cost you $10.

Something that you genuinely mightn't have seen before is on the bill with Mulholland Drive: Maya Deren's experimental  avant-garde 1943 short Meshes of the Afternoon. Both titles were named in the top 20 in the recent British Film Institute Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, if you need any more motivation.

NAGC/FMC