Matthew Lancit grew up in Toronto, Canada before leaving for New York to study filmmaking at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the liberal arts at Sarah Lawrence. Since graduating, his experimental works have been invited to screen at Chasma and the Film Anthology Archives in New York, the art department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and on the Saatchi Gallery website. His short fictional film, Death of a Gentleman, was shown at several international festivals in places like: Rhode Island, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, and Sao Paulo. Aside from making film and video art, Lancit has published heavily personalized essays on a wide range of topics – from the art of cartography to bibliotherapy. With Funeral Season, his first feature length documentary, he is a recipient of the prestigious 2011 Rising Star award at the Canada International Film Festival.
Travelogue and ethnography meet in this comedic ghost story about a Canadian Jew wandering through an African culture where “the dead are not dead.” Embarking on a road trip across Cameroon’s most joyous funeral celebrations, the foreigner befriends his guides and becomes increasingly haunted by memories of his own ancestors.