A silent film essay considers the production of Robert Flaherty's seminal 1922 documentary, Nanook of the North (also known as, A Story Of Life and Love In the Actual Arctic). An image by an Inuk artist is discovered “missing” from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) collection.
Matthew Lax is an artist-filmmaker and writer working between New Jersey, New York, and Los Angeles. Lax often collaborates with animals, non-actors, and the “everyday ensembles” found within families, lovers, hobby clubs, and kink communities. Working between documentary and narrative, his films extrapolate from the participants' real-life relationships and Lax’s own autobiography to explore group behavior, power dynamics, language, critical exchange, and labor production.
Lax’s films and video installations have screened and been exhibited at venues including Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin), MIX New York, MIX Brasil (São Paulo), table (Chicago), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), Human Resources (Los Angeles), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), REDCAT, LA Film Forum, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, and CROSSROADS (San Francisco), among others. In 2025, he was the subject of a survey presentation at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Lax received a BFA from Syracuse University and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Lax’s writing has appeared in publications including BOMB Magazine, MARCH Journal, Texte Zur Kunst, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), and Millennium Film Journal. He is a recipient of a 2024 Lightning Fund Grant from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and the Andy Warhol Foundation.