20 August 2025 (Hong Kong) – Cine Fan will push the boundaries of fear and imagination in its upcoming September/October edition, featuring the nightmarish surrealist cinema of David Lynch alongside a selection of horror films inspired by vampirism.
To pay tribute to the foremost American surrealist who passed away in January, The Haunting Dreamscapes of David Lynch revisits all ten of his seminal feature films, complemented by the popular Cine Fan Film Course, where critics and academics will share their insights in a series of eight lectures.
From his debut feature Eraserhead, Lynch has championed an eerie and enigmatic visual style, crafting fragmented, nightmarish stories that delve into the subconscious and reflect inner anxieties, fears, and desires. The ‘Lynchian’ aesthetics is exemplified in Blue Velvet, followed by Wild at Heart, which won the Cannes Palme d’Or, and culminated in Mulholland Dr., recognised as one of the greatest films of the 21st century, with which Lynch received the Best Director award at Cannes.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, the big-screen prequel to his highly popular TV series Twin Peaks, keeps Lynch fans captivated. Beyond surrealism, the eight Oscar-nominated The Elephant Man and The Straight Story, both based on true stories, offer a rare glimpse into Lynch’s atypical style – unadorned yet profoundly moving. The distinctive sci-fi production Dune, along with Lost Highway and his final feature Inland Empire, though more elusive, are essential for understanding the Lynchian mystery.
The supernatural and immortal nature of vampires allows for inventive cinematic experiments. The programme Long Live Vampire Films! – A Heritage of Vampire Horror features ten creative works, each showcasing a different representation and metaphor of vampirism. Tony Scott and Guillermo del Toro made their auspicious directorial debuts with The Hunger and Cronos, while Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, and Tom Hiddleston transform the undead into stylised icons in Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, respectively.
Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction introduces philosophical reflections on historical atrocities; Park Chan-wook’s violent aesthetic fully unfolds in Thirst; Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows subverts the horror genre with wicked humour; and Ana Lily Amirpour critiques the Iranian patriarchy in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Both exploring teenage solitude and alienation, George A. Romero’s Martin blends horror with social commentary, while Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In envelops itself in sexual ambiguity.
Looking back at the origins of the vampire film in the Golden Age section, the definitive portrayals of Count Dracula by Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s Dracula, and by Christopher Lee in Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula, remain cinema’s most enduring characters. The diabolical grace of both films has become a template for the thriller genre. Complementing the undead’s dark allure is Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death, a cult gothic horror tale that weaves a plague-induced nightmare featuring Vincent Price.
Following the Claude Chabrol retrospective in 2019, Cine Fan will present the newly restored versions of two of the French New Wave auteur’s masterpieces, Les Biches and The Unfaithful Wife, which were initially missing from the line-up due to copyright issues.
The entire programme and schedule of Cine Fan’s September/October edition are available at https://cinefan.com.hk. Starting from 22 August, the public can purchase tickets for all screenings from URBTIX.
