DAVID LYNCH

From his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive — not forgetting the award-winning TV series Twin Peaks — David Lynch, pop culture icon, cult figure, film industry outsider and master filmmaker, has pushed the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. He is a true artist in a realm of pretenders — an American great — who can take his place alongside Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol or Steven Spielberg.

This is a portrait of an enchanting presence: eminently reasonable yet driven, boyishly shy yet a towering force on set, an interviewee of rare clarity who never gives the game away. Lynch is quirky, there is no doubt about that, but it takes an ironclad determination to get any film made, let alone films so uniquely his own.