What does Silencio look like, the select club founded by the director in Paris

Giant of American cinema with immense influence, David Lynch, director of “Sailor and Lula” and the cult series “Twin Peaks”, has died at the age of 78, his family announced Thursday. From the black-and-white zombie story “Eraserhead” (1977), his first feature film financed by odd jobs, to “Mulholland Drive” (2001), via “Elephant Man” (1980), one of his masterpieces which tells the true story of a man affected by deformity and exhibited as a fairground beast during the era of Victorian England, most of his works have become cult.

Born in 1946 in Montana, David Lynch is considered a master of cinema who revolutionized the image and marked his art with the disturbing, enigmatic and haunting atmosphere of these films. A mark that he also left in Paris, at Silencio, the club that the director imagined and entirely designed.

A club in its image, with multiple facets

It was in October 2011 that the doors of Silencio opened, an elegant establishment nestled rue Montmartre, in the 2nd arrondissement of the capital, in the basements of the former daily printing works Dawn. Director, but also painter, photographer and even comic book author, David Lynch has imagined a place in his image: multiple. And he designed every detail, imagining each space and designing the furniture himself. Inside, the atmosphere is cozy, the setting ultra-elegant, like a place out of one of his films, navigating between a vaulted bar painted with gold leaf, a 24-seat cinema or another library and a smoking room with a dark and dreamlike atmosphere. The place is unique. To get an idea in images, it was at Silencio that Aya Nakamura shot the video for her song “Dégaine”, a duet with Damso.

But this 700 m² setting, with the old Eiffel structures, was not designed as a simple club, it offers numerous possibilities. “Our original address designed by director David Lynch offers you a haven of freedom in the heart of the city,” we read on the club’s website. A daring music scene, a place for dance, performances, screenings, exhibitions and parties. An avant-garde concentrate hidden from view.” An avant-garde, however, not within everyone's reach: to enter Silencio at the start of the evening, you must be a member, for an annual subscription of 1,200 euros, or 600 for those under 30. After 11 p.m., everyone can try their luck. But only a few lucky, hand-picked people manage to pass through the black doors.

A tribute to Mullholland Drive

But why “Silencio”? The club is named after the bar that Naomi Watts' character goes to in Mulholland Drive. And once through the doors, the interior of the Parisian club was designed “as a tribute to the Mullohand Drive cabaret, the stage resembles that of an old cinema, framed, with sliding curtains, specifies the establishment. At its feet, a warm dance floor welcomes you for your wisest and most unbridled steps.”

A stage on which the Spanish actress Rossy de Palma performed the week the club opened, in October 2011. She performed “My name is Silence come dance with me”, a song she had written especially for David Lynch, then in the front row, and who had immortalized this moment.

And since the opening of Silencio, many artists have performed there or been seen there. It was there that in 2011, Lana Del Rey gave her very first Parisian concert. There also in 2014, after a fiery concert at the Zénith, Prince gave his very last concert in the French capital. And that Cher took the microphone in October 2023 during Fashion Week to sing her hit “Believe”. Many stars, from ASAP Rocky to Pharrell Williams, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, TheWeeknd and Dua Lipa have been seen there during a performance or enjoying their best Parisian nights.