Screenings
August 30 22:00
DEBATOUN GUESTHOUSE
Play Dead!
France, 2023, 80’
in Armenian/French/Arm.Eng. subtitles
Director and Scriptwriter: Matthew Lancit
Producer: Simon PR Bewick
Cinematographer: Matthew Lancit
Editors: Ariane Mellet, Matthew Lancit
Sound: Jan Vysocky, Stephane Rives, Jules Wysocki
Production Company: Quilombo Films
Every night and every morning, and before every meal, Matthew Lancit checks his blood sugar level, records it in a notebook, and then injects himself with insulin. He has been afflicted with diabetes since childhood. Full of staged phantasmagorical elements and self-irony, Play Dead! is culled from his diary of his family’s quotidian, filmed over five years. He stages the ‘diabetes’ as a hidden, alien presence that haunts his apartment and the very depths of his body.
Matthew Lancit is an award-winning director and screenwriter who has worked in various genres from documentaries to fiction and experimental films. In addition to films, Lancit has published several personal essays. He has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and also studied film production at New York University. His films have won accolades at festivals around the world, and have been invited to New York (Museum of Moving Image, UnionDocs, Anthology Film Archives), the Kaohsiung Film Archive, the Dapper Foundation, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, Kino Arsenal in Berlin, and have been chosen for preservation by the Library and Archives of Canada, the Musée Quai Branly, and Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts.
Filmography
Funeral Season (2011), Flâneurs – Street Rambles (2017), Flying to Nowhere (2018), Play Dead! (2023).