"A short video featuring my friends the ants along with cheese, etc." is how director David Lynch describes his latest film, a short that should come with a disclaimer warning that objects in the picture may prove itchier than they appear. An almost still image of a head of cheese (or a cheese resembling a human head), Ant Head depicts an army of ants devouring the lactose remains. 

An out-of-focus, pulsating blob is how the short appropriately opens, the ominous figure eventually revealing itself to be a head of cheese in which three slots have been gutted to resemble two eyes and a mouth (and a crevice in the center resembling a swollen nose). From there we watch—and listen to one-and-a-half tracks off of the album Thought Gang by Lynch and frequent collaborator and composer Angelo Badalamenti—as a plethora of ants get down to business and take up shop in the holes carved out like a mozzarella pumpkin. 


After a solid eight-and-a-half minutes, the image, complete with a backdrop of electrical powerlines that feel ripped out of industrial Philadelphia (a former home of Lynch), reverts to an X-Ray-like original camera negative that only furthers the concept of a head of cheese as rotting human skull. A voiceover/narration takes over and we're left to observe the translucent image of the ants continuing their business, not unlike how the insects proceed diligently in Lynch's now 32-year-old Blue Velvet. 

Having premiered earlier this year at Lynch's Festival of Disruption, Ant Head is now online for all to see and dissect. In its own way, the short resembles Lynch's Six Men Getting Sick short, albeit if the human head was the main subject of focus. Enjoy!