ERASERHEAD Guest Artistic Director

Dream of dark and troubling things. – David Lynch David Lynch didn’t burst into the cinematic scene so much as crawl. Antagonistic reviews of his first feature, the comic·surreal nightmare ERASERHEAD – with its AFI production and FILMEX debut – prompted midnight movie distributor Ben Barenholtz to strategically roll out the film over the course of two years, literally “cultivating” its audience. Shot in dilapidated industrial settings, seething with rumbles and hisses, peopled with disfigured and eccentric characters and featuring a famously indefinable creature described as a premature baby, the film propels viewers into a shocking, black & white dreamscape. Writing together, critics J. Haberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum have described it as “the most beautiful and brilliant film ever to become a midnight blockbuster.”