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still Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, US 2001)

Mulholland Drive

David Lynch / FR, US, 2001 / 146 min.

Blonde Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives in Los Angeles to make it as an actress. She meets a confused brunette (Laura Harring) with amnesia. What follows is a trippy, surreal, dark story in which dreams are reality – or are they? On 35mm.

poster Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, US 2001) (Eye Filmmuseum release)

Set against the backdrop of a seductive but sinister Hollywood, we follow blonde Betty and brunette Rita as they make their way through filmland. The pair find themselves moving in the circles around a filmmaker who, it turns out, is embroiled in a web spun by semi-criminal film moguls.

Gradually, these two Hollywood archetypes (blond and brunette) lose themselves, along with reality and their dreams – raising the question of what reality actually entails in a city that professionally produces dreams for the big screen.

Dream factory

Lynch treats us to a film that disrupts time and space; in which Hollywood can be both a dream, and a reality built on dreams. The Hollywood term 'dream factory' gets its own Lynchian twist, with music to match by Lynch's regular composer Angelo Badalamenti.

Mulholland Drive is a mix of film-noir-in-colour, romantic crime drama and Brechtian explorations of Alienation, sex and suspense – and was crowned with the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director.

Screens on 35mm (celluloid), preceded by Dream Work (Peter Tscherkassky, 2001) also on 35mm, both from the Eye collection. Dream Work contains flashing images.

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Details

Persons under 16 years must be accompanied by an adultThis movie contains scenes of violence

Director

David Lynch

Production year

2001

Country

FR, US

Original title

Mulholland Drive

Length

146 min.

Language

English, Spanish, French

Subtitles

NLD

Format

35mm, DCP

Part of

2001

In its film programme 2001 – A Time Capsule, Eye Filmmuseum is marking the 25th anniversary of the year 2001 with a generous helping of nostalgia, screening 25 films that were released in 2001.

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campaign image 2001 – A Time Capsule
still Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, US 2001)
still Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, US 2001)
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