Buffalo Rising Online

May 8th 2007, 6:29am By Gabrielle Bouliane

Hallwalls is bringing Buffalo another treat this month in the debut feature film by underground visionary Jim Finn. Interkosmos assumes a fictional reality in which East German Cosmonauts and their allies attempt to establish socialist colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn during the ‘70s. With a wit as dry as paper, Finn spins his tale with an incredible attention to detail and an ability to mash faked retro propaganda into a visual fairy tale of East German concepts of space and infinity.

“I wanted the energy and idealism of the Marxist left to be a part of the film and to create a communist love story in the process, as well as a kind of funeral dirge for a 75-year-old experiment in social and economic engineering,” he says in his Director’s Statement.

Begun as a short film, originally a sequel to his short about the “wustenspringmaus”, or capitalist gerbil, Interkosmos grew to a full 71 minutes, including a space capsule interior, costumes and several dance numbers reminiscent of Buzby Berkeley. He explains, “After nearly two years of trying to figure out the story and how to make it, we built the sets and started filming in March 2005. Though the story was mostly worked out ahead of time, I did not actually write the script until after filming. After a number of revisions, I had the dialogue and letters translated into German and found the voice actors to dub the film.”

A variety of ingredients are used to tell the story of this “secret project”, including mockumentary segments complete with faked archival footage, beautifully constructed miniature sets and intentionally crude stop-motion animations. The soundtrack, which will be released separately on Thrill Jockey Records, also became a critical element of the work. Finn gave the composers, Jim Becker and Colleen Burke, German pop music and international communist work songs as inspirational material, which results in a sound that has been described as “superb garage Kraut-rock”.

“Interkosmos started out in 2003 as a short film about an East German space mission whose communist mascot was the “meerschweinchen” or guinea pig,” says Finn. “I wanted the film to look as if I had been allowed to edit audio and film footage from the East German space archives. Many of the scenes are recreations and variations of actual training photos of the cosmonauts. Though the film is made in the style of a 70s documentary, it has the structure of a Hollywood musical. There is a musical number every 8-12 minutes, which was about standard in the MGM musicals.”

Reviews to date are unwaveringly positive, from Wired Magazine to Variety to the Village Voice, and all the way to the Edinburgh Film Festival synopsis. Of great note, apparently, is the field hockey musical number, which provides a type of intermission in the center of the film. Not surprising from a film that can say “Capitalism is like a kindergarten of boneless children” with a straight face.

A resident of Troy, New York, Jim Finn is part of Hallwall’s Artist-in-Residence program for 2007-08. His films and videos have screened at festivals and venues as diverse as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Underground Film Festival, and the Harvard Film Archive. Finn will be present at the screening, and available for a Q&A after the show.

May 11, 8 PM $7 General Admission, $5 students and $4 members Hallwalls 341 Delaware, 14202, 854.1694