Selected by Dennis Lim | Film Critic and Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

“Blue Velvet is an experience that leaves marks. Perhaps even more so if one encounters it — as did I and many of my generation — on a VHS cassette, somewhat furtively, drawn to the movie’s aura of taboo, not quite knowing what to expect. The shock of the new fades by definition, but if it has hardly done so in the case of Blue Velvet, that may be because its tone remains forever elusive. There are other Lynch films I love even more, but this off-key song of innocence and experience was the one that taught me an eternal truth of cinephilia: the deepest forms of movie love often begin with confusion.” – D.L.

Dennis Lim is the director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where he also serves on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival, as the co-director of New Directors/New Films, and as co-curator of annual programs including Art of the Real and Projections. The film editor at The Village Voice from 2000-2006, and a regular contributor to The New York Times from 2006-2013, he has also written for Artforum, Cinema Scope, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He has taught at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard, he has also taught in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism graduate program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His book David Lynch: The Man From Another Place will be published by Amazon/New Harvest in 2015.