Watch David Lynch team up with Stella McCartney to narrate new short film ‘Curtain’s Up’

The director gives a revealing insight into his love of cinema

David Lynch has teamed up with Stella McCartney to create a new short film, Curtain’s Up. 

Created by Tête-à-Tête, an LA based studio which Lynch’s son Austin and artist Case Simmons manage, the film features Lynch speaking about his love of cinema. The Twin Peaks director also reveals how meditation helped him when wiring and directing films.

Stella McCartney, BØRNS, Lola Kirke, Moonlight star Ashton Sanders and electronic artist SKY H1 also appear in the short.

Advertisement

You can watch the film here:

In the opening moments of the film, Lynch can be seen sat smoking in a darkened cinema before he speaks about the “magic of cinema.”

He says: “Cinema is a language. It can say things – big, abstract things – and I love that about it. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is it’s own language and so you can express a feeling and a thought that can’t be conveyed any other way. It’s a magical medium.”

“For me it’s so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. It’s so magical, I don’t know why. To go into a theatre and have the lights go down – it’s very quiet and then the curtains start to open and then you go into a world.”

He added: “I like a story that holds abstractions, and that’s what cinema can do.”

Advertisement

The acclaimed director also detailed how he began his creative life as a painter, initially having “no interest’ in being a filmmaker until a moment in his studio triggered an area.

“One day I was sitting in a big studio room and I had a painting going…all of a sudden these plants started to move and I heard a wind and I thought ‘oh how fantastic this is’ and I began to wonder if film could be a way to make paintings move.”

The director goes on to describe how meditation helped him to deal with anxiety and depression and progress as a film maker.

“When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger. Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story but they’re like poison to the filmmaker and artist. You have to have clarity to create – you have to be able to catch ideas.”

Earlier this year, Lynch released a book he had co-written, Room To Dream where he outlines a chronology of recollections and memories of his life and career, rather than an explanation of them. The director has previously said that he will “never explain his work”, saying “it reduces” the art form.

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories