Joel Peter Witkin and other infuences

My first impressions of this fascinating piece of cinema is the influence of the photography of Joel Peter Witkin and the surreal cinema of Bunuel/Dali are its more interesting benchmarks. The whole look of BEGOTTEN obviously comes from the film makers love of early silent films, especially german expressionist, hence he went on to make Shadow of the vampire. Personally I don't think anything David Lynch has ever done comes close to this, even Eraserhead, but the work of Norman McLaren or any makers of experimental short films using stop motion and rephotographed elements would be a better example. Anyone else see, most especially,the J.P.Witkin influence?