PLAY DEAD!
Matthew Lancit | France, Portugal 2023 | 80 min. | English, French with English subtitles
MONDAY, 20.05. | 9:30 pm
Votiv Kino, Gr. Saal | TICKETS
Austrian premiere
In presence of Matthew Lancit
Matthew Lancit checks his blood sugar levels morning, noon and night, writes them down and then injects himself with insulin. Over the course of five years, he films the impact of his disease on everyday family life. Diabetes is staged as a hidden, alien presence that haunts his home and his body. In the tradition of ‘body horror’ films, feelings and fears are condensed into abstract physical manifestations.
Interspersed with plenty of humour and irony and bowing to the horror film genre, PLAY DEAD! conveys the complexity of life of a chronically ill father. The mother slips into the role of a make-up artist and the daughter contributes as a little vampire. A family portrait between fear, humour and care.
Director: Matthew Lancit
Cinematography: Matthew Lancit
Editing: Ariane Mellet, Matthew Lancit
Sound: Jan Vysocky, Matthew Lancit, Stephane Rives, Jules Wysocki
Production: Simon Bewick, Quilombo Films
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
DOK Leipzig
DocPoint Helsinki
Festival International Jean Rouch
Riga Pasaules Film Festival
BIOGRAPHY
Somewhere between performance art and ethnography, film diary and the phantasmagorical, the tragic and the absurd, the films of Matthew Lancit merge and break apart traditional categorization. They 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 Jerusalem Cinémathèque, the Arsenal in Berlin, and have been chosen for preservation by the Library and Archives of Canada, the Musée Quai Branly.
