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On the occasion of Anthology’s premiere run of THE ANNOTATED FIELD GUIDE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, we present a weekend of screenings surveying Finn’s earlier work, including his peerless “Communist Trilogy,” the “Inner Trotsky Child” series, and two under-seen mid-length films, SUNDAY SCHOOL WITH FRANZ HINKELAMMERT (2012) and THE DRUNKARD’S LAMENT (2018).
“Finn is a unique figure, although, like the freewheeling assemblagist Craig Baldwin and obsessive artificer Guy Maddin, he has an acute sense of cinema as alternative history. Though generally hilarious, Finn’s movies are closer to pastiche (often incorporating found footage and actual texts) than parody. His necessarily ironic attitude is tinged with nostalgia – and a bit of erotic obsession. Utopian as they are, Finn’s features regularly erupt into (mainly) female mass dance numbers and spectacular, if primitive, light shows – often with infectious original music. […] Finn’s powerful social awareness is matched by his appreciation for the pathos of political kitsch. A master (and connoisseur) of revolutionary jargon and militant catechism, he takes Communism too seriously not to be moved by its aspirations – and their tragic results. This is the paradox: Finn is not only a pomo aesthete who can’t help putting quotation marks around the Communist project, but a Kierkegaardian true believer whose leap of faith is the production of precisely these quixotic movies.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE