Jim Finn: Comedic Laments
Chums from Across the Void, by Jim Finn
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Jim Finn: Comedic Laments
Sunday, March 10, 2019, 7:30 pm
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028
Filmmaker Jim Finn in person! Two Los Angeles premieres!
Filmforum welcomes back filmmaker Jim Finn with LA premieres of two of his latest indefinable humorous experimental works, along with two golden not-so-oldies. “Chums from Across the Void” is the newest self-help phenomenon, guiding us from a post-Trotskyite position to deal with corporate capitalism. “The Drunkard’s Lament” is an epistolary musical from the vantage point of little known Brontë brother Branwell (a real person), his views on how sister Emily should revise the draft of her novel Wuthering Heights, and his difficult livelihood after the husband of his mistress died, all in the form of a reconstructed lost 1898 film version of the novel. (Branwell himself died in 1848, followed a few months later by Emily.) The film, constructed on hand-made emulsion, is a black & white work of beauty. Along with the haunting “might-have-been” found footage recap of “Decision ‘80” and the unremitting delight of “wüstenspringmaus”, Finn continues his unique merging of humor, history, politics, propaganda, and savvy understanding of media history.
BIO:
"Steeped in the obsolete language of revolutionary art," The New York Times said Jim Finn's films "often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe." His award-winning movies have been called "Utopian comedies" and "trompe l'oeil films" and according to Variety "upturn notions of documentary and fiction, propaganda thought, reality and restaging, and even what an 'experimental film' actually is." Born in St. Louis in 1968, he teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. http://www.jimfinn.org/
Tickets: $10 general; $6 for students/seniors; free for Filmforum members. Available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at https://jimfinn.bpt.me or at the door.
For more information: www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238.
The Drunkard’s Lament
The Drunkard’s Lament
2018, 40:15
Los Angeles Premiere!
When Branwell — the ne’er-do-well, tubercular brother of the Brontë sisters — discovered that Emily was writing her first novel, he offered to be her editor. Once he realized that he was the model for the alcoholic Hindley Earnshaw character, he reimagined the story as a musical memoir of his own life with Hindley as the hero. Edited and arranged from the damaged film fragments, notes, sheet music and letters to his best friend Francis, this weird and revisionist adaptation looks to have premiered on the 50th anniversary of the deaths of Emily and Branwell Brontë.
Chums from Across the Void
Chums from Across the Void
2015, 17:30
Los Angeles Premiere!
Little Radek, the step-dancing Bolshevik; Machera, the Andean Robin Hood, and Maria Spiridonova, the pre-Soviet socialist assassin are your guides for Past Leftist Life Regression therapy. Former Trotskyite turned suburban housewife, narrator Lois Severin creates a way to cope with life in the Prime Material Plane of Corporate Capitalism and to create a 21st-Century revolution of the mind.
Decision 80
Decision 80
2003, 10:00
"A decisive moment in American history remixed into the prelude to your worst fucking nightmare." — New York Underground Film Festival
wüstenspringmaus
wüstenspringmaus
2002, 2:30
“Jim Finn's wüstenspringmaus, a well-sprung, rear-screened account of a gerbil's life in the Seventies." — Guy Maddin, Film Comment