Fourteen short films by David Lynch, made between 1967 and 2007: Six Men Getting Sick, The Alphabet, The Grandmother, The Amputee, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Lumière, Darkened Room, Dumbland, Boat, Bug Crawls, Industrial Soundscape, Lamp, Out Yonder and Intervalometer Experiments.

– Six Men Getting Sick (1967, 4 min): Lynch's first film: a painted, sculpted screen of six distorted figures whose stomachs swell and heads catch fire before they vomit in turn, looped six times to the wail of a siren. Conceived as a painting that moves, it was made by an art student who had not yet thought of directing films.

– The Alphabet (1968, 4 min): A girl in bed is attacked by the alphabet: letters sprout, multiply and swarm while a sing-song chorus recites A-B-C, until learning itself becomes a sickness. Inspired by a niece of Lynch's first wife Peggy reciting the alphabet in her sleep, it plays like a nightmare about being taught.

– The Grandmother (1970, 34 min): A lonely boy, abused and barked at by animal-like parents, plants a seed on his bed and grows himself a gentle grandmother who gives him the tenderness no one else will. Mixing stop-motion, painted animation and grotesque live action, it is the first real sketch of the world Lynch would build in Eraserhead.

– The Amputee (1974, 9 min): A woman with no legs reads aloud a long, fussy letter about a romantic misunderstanding while a nurse (Lynch himself) clumsily dresses her bleeding stumps. Her voice-over never notices the mess below. Shot in one take to test video stock, it is deadpan comedy and quiet horror at once.

– The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988, 26 min): On a ranch, a slow-witted cowboy and his hands capture a lost Frenchman who speaks no English and carries a suitcase full of baguettes, cheese and wine. A slapstick collision of national cliches that ends in a party, it is Lynch at his most openly goofy.

– Lumière (1995, 1 min): In under a minute and five fragmented shots, police find a body in a field, a mother waits in dread, and figures in a strange chamber perform an ominous ritual. Shot on the Lumiere brothers' original 1895 camera, it compresses a whole Lynch nightmare into the length of one reel of early cinema.

– Darkened Room (2002, 12 min): A cheerful young Japanese woman introduces herself and chats about a neighbour; then the film drops into a dark room where one woman sits crying on a bed while another accuses her. Small talk turns into a menacing psychodrama, made with the DIY digital tools Lynch later used for Inland Empire.

– Dumbland (2002, 8 episodes, 34 min): A crude, hand-drawn black-and-white cartoon about Randy, a loud, violent, beer-swilling father, his frazzled wife and squeaky-voiced son. Lynch drew it himself and voices every character. Each episode is a burst of grunts, fights and bodily noises: a deliberately ugly sitcom about American stupidity.

– Boat (2007, 8 min): Lynch takes a motorboat out across a lake at dusk while a woman's voice narrates the trip in dreamy, childlike tones. As the light fades the boat speeds up into a blown-out white glare. A small, playful DV sketch that turns a home video into a quiet journey into the unknown.

– Bug Crawls (2004, 5 min): In a bleak black-and-white landscape, a bug crawls across the roof of a dark house, slips onto its back, and the camera drifts toward a door that opens. A tiny animated doodle over a heavy industrial drone that hints at a hidden world just out of sight.

– Industrial Soundscape (2002, 13 min): A wordless piece in which machines in a dim, desolate factory clank, hiss and pound in loops, building rhythm out of industrial noise. With no story at all, it is a pure expression of Lynch's lifelong love of factories, smoke and the music of heavy machinery.

– Lamp (2003, 23 min): Lynch spends a day in his workshop building a tall lamp from metal and plaster, mixing materials, shaping and chatting as he works. An intimate look at Lynch as craftsman and furniture-maker, showing the same hands-on patience that runs through his painting and filmmaking.

– Out Yonder (2001, 11 min): Lynch and his son Austin sit in lawn chairs in a sun-dappled yard, talking in strangled voices and a private dialect, while a shadowy figure lurks nearby. A deadpan backyard comedy that slowly turns uncanny, it shows Lynch's sense of the absurd at its most homemade.

– Intervalometer Experiments (2004, 19 min): Time-lapse studies shot with an intervalometer: a sunset, steps with a tree's shadow sweeping across them, an interior dining room. Hours of light and shadow are compressed into minutes, turning ordinary places into slow, breathing images that sit close to Lynch's photography and painting.