David Lynch — Lumière: Premonitions Following an Evil Deed

David Lynch was one of forty directors who each directed a fifty-two second short film in celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Lumiere brothers’ first camera. All the directors used the same camera, and some of the results are quite effective (including one by Peter Greenaway), but Lynch’s short segment is far and away the best of the forty. It’s an abstract film with no dialogue. Three cops arrive at the body of a young boy in a field. A worried-looking woman is in a living room. Three women are in a garden. Three grotesque figures, one carrying a steaming frying-pan, are beside a naked woman submerged in water in a glass tank, and one of the hideous creatures is tapping the glass with a stick. Then flames of fire fade back to the woman in the living room, and one of the cops arriving and entering the room. Finish. Very Lynchian. Imaginative, and a vision of his subconscious world.