Lynch’s films captured America’s schizophrenic combination of sweetness, naiveté, dread, silent corruption

David Lynch , who died on 15 January aged 78 , was that rare phenomenon in cinema: an arthouse director who found popular success without compromising his ferociously original vision.

Films like Blue Velvet ( 1986 ), Wild at Heart ( 1990 ), Lost Highway ( 1997 ), Mulholland Drive ( 2001 ), and Inland Empire secured his place in cinematic history as the only purely American surrealist.

Lynch 's achievement was to express a strange combination of iconoclasm and classicism, cynicism and sentimentality.

Eraserhead is a remarkable example of a first feature in which the artist’s talents and preoccupations are already fully formed.

The other project that deserves a special mention isRabbits, a series of digital short films released online in 2002 .

Each episode of which is recorded by a static camera in a single unbroken take, three anthropomorphic rabbits potter.

David Lynch’s films remind us that we do not yet have to surrender to the whims of a decadent Hollywood machine or focus-group aesthetic of giant media corporations.

There is still room for those who hand-make monstrous babies and demented sitcoms, and who combine technical virtuosity with a free and fearless imagination.