MDST3501: Special Topics in Directors and Auteurs | Fall, 2025
Meets Tuesdays/Thursdays, 2:00pm-3:15pm
[Note: This course is applicable toward the MDST Film Concentration]

“Film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream, allows you to dream in the dark.” – David Lynch.

In this course, we will look at the life and career of David Lynch (1946-2025), one of the most profoundly influential American film directors of the late 20th century and early 21st century. Lynch’s work balanced a deep appreciation of Americana with a decidedly surrealistic vision. His films featured dreamlike, hallucinatory imagery and yet were often grounded in the quotidian — from the appreciation of a cup of coffee to a love of American 1950s pop music. While his work began in the world of the avant garde “midnight movie,” his career took him (briefly) into bigger-budget blockbuster cinema, and eventually he positioned himself as a premier figure in American (and international) independent cinema. We will attempt to understand the man’s work, his creative life, and his lasting significance as one of cinema’s most iconoclastic recent figures.

Throughout this, we will focus on the act of interpretation — something that is a staple of many courses about film and yet was, apparently, anathema to Lynch himself. He vocally — and sometimes frustratingly! — refused to elaborate on the interpretation of his own films. To wit:

How does one reconcile the desire to find meaning within an artist’s work, as well as recognize the artist’s intent to have their work not be easily “explained”? How do we understand the work of a director/”auteur” when they are steadfastly opposed to explaining their intent with their work? How do we make sense of Lynch’s approach to cinema in the context of his other artistic endeavors?

In this course, we will pursue a nearly-exhaustive review of his cinematic work. We will watch all ten of his theatrical releases in chronological order. We will also spend several weeks on his singular contributions to television — primarily 1990-1991’s Twin Peaks as well as the Showtime revival of Twin Peaks in 2017. We will also investigate his many other artistic works, including the connections between his films and his approaches to painting, his music and use of music in his films, his other shorter-lived television work (e.g., Hotel Room and On the Air), music videos and concert movies, comics (The Angriest Dog in the World), and short films (e.g., Six Figures Getting Sick, The Grandmother, Rabbits, and What Did Jack Do?).

This recent Alamo Drafthouse promo (for their “In Dreams: Films of David Lynch” series playing in March, 2025) does a nice job of briefly showcasing all but one of his theatrical films:

There is one film — The Straight Story — that the Alamo Drafthouse does not include in this series (likely as it is distributed by Disney, a topic we’ll discuss). Here’s a trailer for this remaining Lynch film (which you might note is stylistically quite different from the others above):

Over the course of the term, we will also look at the impact of Lynch’s work, not just in film scholarship, but as reflected in other media — to begin, we will screen the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life early in the term as well as the documentary Lynch/Oz near the middle of the term or perhaps the end (detailing Lynch’s ongoing cinematic obsession with The Wizard of Oz). We will also discuss his across other media forms from games to television spoofs to ongoing Twin Peaks fandom.

Throughout, we will explore these ideas of interpretation and “authorship,” as well as how we consider the contributions of his many regular collaborators — from producers (Dino DeLaurentiis) to actors (Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Isabella Rossellini) to musicians (Angelo Badalamenti, Dean Hurley), cinematographers (Frederick Elmes, Freddie Francis) to production designers (Jack Fisk). Our goal will be not just to celebrate and interrogate Lynch’s work, but also to dig into the (often controversial, often critiqued) idea of the “auteur” in film studies as well as challenge how we interpret films such as these.

The final list of books will be determined closer to the beginning of the term, but will likely include the following three texts:

However, the films themselves will be the primary texts of the course, and will likely be presented in something like the following order (Letterboxd links provided below):

Students will be required to watch about 2-3 hours per week, with one notable exception: The selections from the Twin Peaks week (episodes from seasons 1 and 2, plus other short television episodes) will total around 5-6 hours for that week. Beyond the assigned films and books, any supplemental course readings/screenings provided as PDFs via the course Canvas site or links to online texts. As watching and discussing these films will provide the backbone for the course, students will be organized into persistent “screening pods” to help students watch and discuss the films together outside of class. There will be no dedicated screening time for the entire course, but students are encouraged to coordinate their pods to watch together (either in a face-to-face context or online). All films will be made available to students via Canvas, and any theatrical screenings of Lynch’s will be noted to students whenever they are available.

There will be no exams for the course, and most assessments will be in the form of regular written papers and video responses to the films. For a final project, students will create a video essay interpreting Lynch’s work or potentially craft a creative interpretation of Lynch’s work presented in the course.

If you have any questions about this course, please don’t hesitate to contact Dr. Duncan at sean.duncan@virginia.edu.