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There's never been a filmmaker quite like David Lynch – and there may never be another one again. To commemorate his passing and celebrate his extraordinary body of work, Picturehouse is bringing a year-long season, David Lynch's Dream Theatre, to our cinemas: a monthly Lynch masterpiece, paired with a 'Lynchspiration' – a companion piece, a film beloved by the man himself, or a film indebted to his work. 

Because our adoration can't be contained to our screens, we asked Team Picturehouse to tell us why they love David Lynch: be it because of one special film, one special memory, or something his films do that nobody can better. Read on to find out why – and we'll see you in the Dream Theatre.

In 1978, I saw Eraserhead. A mind-blowing film that I've since seen 50 times or more, when we played it at The Ritzy, I was working tearing tickets. I went and sat in the back row and watched over and over again in wonderment, debating with colleagues and naysayers who found the film too unsettling, too dark. From the moment I saw it, I loved it, and I still do. 

I knew from then on that David Lynch was a director to take notice of. He was a visionary: an artist, writer, prankster, reporter of the daily weather in LA for 3 years. A renaissance man. Why do I, and so many others, love his work? Simple: he was like no other. He made beautifully crafted films and TV with truly unique storytelling, from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks, The Straight Story to Dune, and so many more. 

Lynch was a consummate filmmaker whose work could never be predicted. The excitement we all felt at any new project he brought to the world is what made him one of the greats. He was what cinema should be – and what it can continue to be, if we open our minds and support the voices that don't follow the crowd. Lynch forever.

Clare Binns |  Managing Director

Skin, Oil & The Croons of a Cocktail Jazz Singer

Through his work, David Lynch taught me the importance of abstraction. I think we put too much emphasis on deriving meaning from the mundane – something easily conflated with authenticity – and in turn, deriding the notion that pure affect can be tangible. 

Yet whether through the subverted suburban soap-operatic tropes of Twin Peaks, descending headfirst into the raw, abject liminal, or later low-res digital dalliance, Inland Empire, it doesn't matter whether you can articulate or provide an express summary of the work.

Rather, haptic aura and textural timbres, conjured, permutated and transmitted through fully realised audiovisual landscapes, shape and constrain the experience – often capped off by an exquisitely sombre Angelo Badalamenti score. 

Process and incandescent feeling are Lynch's main powers, and, in black and white, good and evil, urban and pastoral, dimensionality prevails. I'll never forget the first time I saw Mulholland Drive; it was truly trancelike. In a world of instants and needless words, that only continues to mean something. 

Miles Comer  |  Host, Greenwich Picturehouse

As somebody who first experienced the films of David Lynch retrospectively, on her TV and at repertory screenings (see: somebody in her twenties), the last thing I expected to find in them was a new way to think about disability. It's typical, really – that he'd have already figured out something in ten films that I'd been thinking about every single day of my life.

Lynch has made no secret of his fascination with disability, with Eraserhead's baby, Twin Peaks' One Armed Man (and all of his subsequent incarnations), and lesser-seen short The Amputee. None more overtly though than in 1980's The Elephant Man, charting the life and death of Joseph (John) Merrick: a severely physically disabled man living in Victorian England.

Faced with the prejudices of his times, he turns to art and compassion for new and radical forms of communication and understanding. Lynch goes on to offer his ultimate case against our desire for normalcy - for Merrick, this want to assimilate proves ultimately fatal.

Lynch doesn't condemn his disabled characters to any certain fate, but uses his cinematic language to locate a kind of liberation not offered in these characters' circumstances: a transformative vision which both art and dreams - his specialities - can provide, both on and off the screen.

Hope Hopkinson  |  Social Media Executive

Dune feels like the unloved child of David Lynch's filmography - not least by himself. Admittedly, it is a dense, needlessly complicated yet hideously simplified adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi saga. But I love it, even more so than Denis Villeneuve's rightfully lauded adaptation.

It's the first David Lynch film I ever saw, and I was mesmerised. I was 13 when it came out, and it remains like nothing I have ever seen before. It is wildly visually inventive, with a lush steampunk vibe that sits somewhere between Renaissance Italy and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The producers were hoping for the next Star Wars. Lynch delivered something else. 

It has a cast to die for, including Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart, Sting ("I will kill him!), Dean Stockwell, Siân Phillips, Max von Sydow, Linda Hunt, Richard Jordan - plus Lynch stalwarts Jack Nance, Everett McGill, Freddie Jones and not least, Kyle MacLachlan as Paul. 

If nothing else, we have Dune to thank for pairing Lynch with Kyle MacLachlan: it was not only his first project with Lynch but MacLachlan's first feature film ever. So we also have that to thank it for, too.

I love the gigantic swings that big-budget sci-fi movies often take, and Dune went hard. It is unmistakably a David Lynch movie, and one that deserves so be seen on the big screen.

Simon Ragoonanan | Digital Marketing Manager

​​David Lynch's influence is far-reaching and strange; through him we've gained the word 'Lynchian', which will see use as long as we still dream. Here are some sparks from Lynch's worlds that have affected mine. I was floored by an interview with Al Strobel (The One-Armed Man) hidden amongst the extras on a family friend's DVD of Twin Peaks: The First Season Special Edition.

As a 17-year-old, Al hit black ice going 70mph, flew through his car roof, spiralled high into an elm tree and came crashing down. On the verge of death, Al describes going through an "inverted glove" – "this reality unfolded itself from the inside". The story felt completely in continuity with the show, enhancing it somehow. 

In the same vein, I'd recommend the tribute album Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, especially the harrowing closer 'Josie's Past'. Lynch's approach to music particularly enthralled me: he and Angelo Badalamenti's transcendental 'Mysteries of Love' in Blue Velvet, his use of Bowie's 'I'm Deranged' in Lost Highway, and the nightmarish soundscapes of Eraserhead, Dumbland, and even David Lynch Cooks Quinoa (an instructional film I've followed a dozen times). 

I'm at risk of listing Lynch's works ad nauseum, so I'll credit The Return's Parts 8 and 18 as his most emotionally and existentially impactful on me – and the reason I painted the bedroom from Eraserhead on The Ritzy's A-Board in celebration of our season.

Guy Barnsley  | Host, The Ritzy

You remember the first time you meet David Lynch. You hear about him first as this master of horror, as this titan of surrealism, as this mysterious, magnificent weirdo who talks about dreams, who paints stark black paintings and records made discordant albums called things like 'Crazy Clown Time'.  

Lynch was not just a director: he was an artist in the truest sense of the word, able to take you by the hand, invite you to enter into his worlds, and then refuse to let you go. Lynch was interested in crime, sex, magick, the unknowable, and the idea that deep in the heart of place and person was a dark centre – and it was your job to fight against that.

This is why I loved Lynch. He showed that the fundamental goodness inside a person was worth preserving; he rooted for the right side and wanted to help the helpless. He showed that you did not have to fit in, that if you were authentic and honest with yourself and others, you would find yourself and be appreciated.  Lynch understood people in a way few artists do:  that they are messy and strange, and that each one mattered.

Jordan Rodgers  |  Duty Manager, The Cameo

Our celebration of David Lynch runs throughout 2025 with David Lynch's Dream Theatre, bringing you films, 'Lynchspirations', and the chance to watch Twin Peaks on the big screen. Head to picturehouses.com/davidlynch to find it all.