On 16 January, the world of cinema mourned the passing of one its most respected and beloved artists, David Lynch. The outpouring of love and grief, alongside the many stories of lives and perspectives forever changed by his films, highlighted that not only was Lynch a true original but that his art had transcended boundaries in a very rare and extraordinary way.

As an independent cinema marking its 30th anniversary, Showroom’s screens have long been intertwined with Lynch’s films and additional studies and appreciations of his works over the last three decades. Throughout 2025, Showroom Cinema will pay tribute to the life and works of David Lynch.

A fiercely independent and uncompromising visionary who advocated for ‘the art life’, Lynch originally forged his way into filmmaking through studying Fine Arts. The paintings, soundscapes, sculptures and visual arts of his early years informed his unique and unflinching style, alongside a seemingly continuous need to be creative.

Lynch made his independent feature film debut with 1977’s Eraserhead, a film so compelling and original, it quickly became a cult sensation and one of the original must-see “midnight movies”. From Eraserhead right through to the sensational ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ forty years later, it has been evident through the film, television, music videos, commercials, and even YouTube weather reports, that David Lynch was a visual artist like no other.

It is a remarkable feat that Lynch maintained both artistic integrity and critical acclaim. With multiple Oscar nominations for The Elephant Man, a Palme d’Or win for Wild at Heart, and both Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive regularly ranking highly in critics’ lists of the greatest films of all time, the respect for Lynch’s work has seldom waned.

Yet, Lynch himself was roundly loveable, famously being described by Mel Brooks as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars”. Somehow embodying both fashionable artistic chic and humble Americana, Lynch was loved not just his work but for his sense of humour, lack of tolerance for interference with his art, and for all intents and purposes being seemingly a good, albeit odd, egg.

The world of cinema may have lost one of its most significant and singular figures from this planet but on screen and in dreams, David Lynch will always live on.

In Dreams: A David Lynch Retrospective plays at Showroom Cinema from 28 February and is on sale now at: /davidlynchretrospective