In 1968, David Lynch was just getting his hands dirty with experimental film and art, but was getting reluctant to continue working with film due to the high cost. His mind was changed when a fellow student saw Lynch’s paintings and offered the soon-to-be cult director, $1000 to create a similar film to Lynch’s “After Six Figures Getting Sick”. Lynch purchased a used Bolex camera and began filming, only to discover a few months later that the camera was defective, rendering his film useless. The film student told Lynch to keep the rest of the money and do whatever he’d like with it.

Around this time, Lynch’s wife, Peggy, told him of a dream she had, where her niece was reciting the alphabet in her sleep, woke up, then started bouncing around the room repeating the recital. Lynch ran with it, creating the haunting short, “The Alphabet”. When I say haunted, I mean it, I’ve seen it many times and I always get an icky feeling, maybe it’s just something about scary chanting children or the chilling soundtrack, featuring a newborn Jennifer Lynch crying, I can’t quite place it.

Turn off your lights and watch the video after the jump…

Read more of ”David Lynch short film: The Alphabet“

A little over 10 years ago, 41 international directors were asked to create a short film using an original Cinematographe created by the Lumière Borthers in 1895, as part of the Lumière et compagnie project. Part of this group was the man we know and love, David Lynch, who by many accounts created the most inspiring short of all included. There were 3 rules involved with the making of the short, 1) The film must be under 52 seconds (possibly due to a technical limitation), 2) no synched sound was permitted, and 3) the directors were allowed no more than 3 takes. David Lynch’s short was titled, “Premonitions Following an Evil Deed” and featured 52 seconds of beautifully framed and filmed images, which even today feels fresh and exciting. I agree with the original poster, imagine what could have been created by Lynch if given more time and more stock in this format?

["Premonitions Following an Evil Deed" by Lynch at Google Video | Lumière Cinématographe at Wikipedia]