Secret Beyond The Door

NOT BY LYNCH opens tonight.

NOT BY LYNCH opens tonight at The Cinema Museum, London. Ahead of the screening, programmer Arta Barzanji introduces his nine-film series, presented in association with Cinema Year Zero. Then, Alonso Aguilar introduces the main feature, Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond The Door (1947). A few tickets are still available here.

Not Lynch, but Lynchian

Season introduction by Arta Barzanji

When we talk about affinities between films or filmmakers, we often default to the language of influence: who saw what, who inspired whom, which images or ideas travelled from one body of work to another. This way of thinking is useful, but it can also be limiting. The “Lynchian” transcends influence altogether. It has become a widely used adjective, not only within cinephile or critical circles, but also in everyday speech. People speak of spaces, moods, political moments, even personal experiences as feeling “Lynchian”. Very few filmmakers’ names make this leap into common parlance. Hitchcock perhaps did so before, but even that term remains more tethered to cinema style. The Lynchian, by contrast, has entered a broader cultural vocabulary à la Kafka.