From February 1 to 28, Bologna’s Cinema Modernissimo pays tribute to David Lynch, just days after his death, with a retrospective of his films, curated by the Cineteca di Bologna. Ten photographs taken by the famous American director, from the MAST Foundation Collection, will be exhibited for the occasion in the foyer of the Modernissimo. At the same time, the Cineteca di Bologna is also releasing four of Lynch’s most representative works in various Italian theaters: The Elephant Man, Lost Roads, A True Story and Mulholland Drive, all of which are also being screened at the Cinema Modernissimo, along with many of the director’s other masterpieces. These include his debut feature Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild Heart, Fire Walk With Me, Inland Empire and a selection of his short films.
“David Lynch’s death marks this beginning of 2025,” says Cineteca di Bologna director Gian Luca Farinelli. “He introduced us to a new look at the U.S., invented a new way of understanding the relationship between music and images, devised characters and situations that we will never forget, and, above all, in an age when everything has to be explained, showed us the fascination of the mysterious and unfathomable, even within a Hollywood film. For this indomitable resistance to the system, we will always be grateful to him, confident that his work will surpass all fashions and all times.”
OnThursday, Feb. 6, at 5:30 p.m., film critic Roy Menarini will give a lectureentitled Seeing the Darkness. The Cinema of David Lynch, offering an in-depth analysis of Lynchian poetics. “Few have wondered why, when seeing a David Lynch film, one feels at home,” Menarini writes. “Even in the face of the darkest worlds, the most irrational threats, the most gruesome violence, the universe renamed as Lynchtown has become familiar to us. We love to inhabit it, to return to it, to test it time and time again. And it is no coincidence that the sudden news of the American filmmaker’s death elicited one of the most sincere and unanimous waves of affection we can remember for an artist: evidently that pleasure in the face of his distorted and brilliant tales was always dictated by artistic integrity and creative transparency. Lynch, in practice, always told us the truth, confessed himself with unique candor, stripped himself of his visions and shared them unfiltered, like the most generous man he was and stubbornly devoted to his cinema and his images. To review all his films together now is to look at our entire personal Lynchtown in perspective, willingly losing ourselves in that magnificent and unparalleled visionary labyrinth where the boundaries between one work and another tend to blur.”
The images on display were part of The Factory Photographs exhibition, curated by Petra Giloy-Hirtz in collaboration with MAST Foundation and The Photographers’ Gallery, held at MAST in 2014.
The shots, taken between 1986 and 2000 in industrial areas of Berlin, Łódź and New Jersey, reflect Lynch’s interest in factories and his obsession with smokestacks, chimneys and machinery, with darkness and mystery. The images capture environments once pivotal to industrial progress, now transformed into evocative settings imbued with the enigmatic aura typical of his artistic vision. The atmosphere of his photographs is charged with suggestion: the intense black of the sharp, graphic lines contrasts with shades of dark gray, recalling charcoal drawings. It is as if the fine dust, soot and vapors of those places have been imprinted on the paper, resulting in striking images.
Lynch’s unmistakable style emerges in the chosen subjects, hues and dreamlike settings, evoking the labyrinthine and enigmatic visionary nature of his films
Admission to the exhibition is free.
![]() |
Bologna, Cinema Modernissimo pays tribute to David Lynch with retrospective of his films and an exhibition |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.