Wholphin

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Liner Notes:

Wholphin: Are you, or have you ever been, a communist? (Basically, do you have a political philosophy that informs your work?)

Jim Finn: I have been fairly obsessed with communism for a number of years. I think it’s my Catholic background that draws me to any kind of intransigent political system that claims to be for the poor and working classes. Also, i did human rights work in Guatemala and Southern Mexico and was really exposed to the different lines of communist ideology. We had meetings with different groups that were aligned with different “lineasâ€? who would barely speak to each other. It seemed kind of medieval.

W: Explain your views on “work� and how do those views infect your films.

JF: Most of what you see in films has nothing to do with people’s normal lives. I mean a film is normally about some exceptional moment in someone’s life or something totally out of the ordinary. So I try and create these kind of strange, alternate realities and then portray some really mundane elements in them. Also, I have a father who felt that it was important to inculcate us with a strong work ethic along with quizzing us on geography and historical details. I knew about the date 1066 before I could read.

W: How much of springmaus is based on truth?

JF: It’s kind of based on an essay read about the Mongolian hordes and the fact that Ogodai, Genghis Khan’s son, died right as the Mongolians were sweeping across Poland at the same time capitalism was starting in the Netherlands. They had to turn around to elect a new Khan and never made it back. Then I read about the history and background of the gerbil, which is a rodent from the steppes of Mongolia, and is a popular pet in the übercapitalist U.S. The film is made to look like a 70s school documentary although obviously much more fun.

W: Seriously, are you a commie? Do you have any friends who are communist sympathizers?

JF: I mean theoretically I think I wish I could be a commie or more of one, but when you actually meet communists, they can be a little hard to deal with. More of my friends are anarchists or Democrats I guess. But I do have socialistic politics. i think it’s better for a government to fund arts and babies and condoms over laser bombs and megahighways. Also, grandpa from the Munsters was a communist. And I heard him on Pacifica radio explaining that in the 30s and 40s, people understood communists to be the ones who put all your furniture back in your house after you were evicted.

W: Do you have a favorite piece of revolutionary art? A favorite political art movement? (the futurists, the constructivist movement, the Situationists, etc?)

JF: I am a big fan of John Heartfield, a German photo-montagist, who altered photos to express a more real reality like Göring with a bloody butcher apron and Hitler choking on gold coins. He did these when the nazis were in their respectable phase and he was chased out of the country for it. He anglicized his name in protest of what was being done in the name of German culture.

W: You seem to have a fascination with the Rodina, the motherland Russia, yes?

JF: I am interested in the invisible air we breathe called capitalism. For much of the 20th century there existed an alternative economic system. Granted, it was fucked up and I don’t want to whitewash what was done in the name of “the peopleâ€?, but they were on to something. They had women and brown people in space before we did and the only reason trading Cuba oil for sugar and nickel is a subsidy is because of world markets — which had nothing to do with their economic system. Hmmm. But I’m no expert.

W: You just completed a masterful feature film, Interkosmos, in which there are communist pillows. You made those pillows yourself. It must have been very difficult and time consuming to make those pillows. Why did you insist on handmade communist pillows for a brief scene in Interkosmos?

JF: I made a series of communist hero pillows as a way of acknowledging a few of the communist ideological lines in South America; i.e., the Gang-of-Four Maoism of the Shining Path in Peru and the radical liberation theology of the guerrilla priest Camilo Torres. The pillows are made to represent propaganda but also are propaganda in themselves. I have six of them and have displayed them in shows and I went on a craft tour with them through red states while I was working on them. They gave me carpal tunnel syndrome so sadly that might be the last large-scale needlepoint project for me. But I put two of them in the movie to give the film a crafty edge.

W: How do you run your set? Tyrannical dictatorship, anarcho-syndicalism?

JF: Controlled panic and fun i guess. I’m not sure really. you’d have to ask my collaborators. I got the worst case of swamp-ass in my life filming the field hockey scene of Interkosmos in the 95-degree Michigan heat. I try to get the most talented people I can and then annoy the hell out of them and give them lots of love and drive myself harder than I drive anyone else. I’ve yet to make or have any money while filming so there’s an amateur and doing-it-for-the-love-of-something quality which is pretty great (and frustrating). Wüstenspringmaus I filmed in my kitchen and francoise the gerbil had a lot of fun. I didn’t heat the tank or anything.

Biography:

Jim Finn’s video and film work has screened internationally at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh, New York Underground Film Festival, and on PBS. His first feature film, Interkosmos, will be released in early 2007 as a dvd/soundtrack combo on Thrill Jockey Records. His award-winning film wüstenspringmaus has become a festival favorite and a cult classic. He is currently working on recreating a Shining Path women’s prison cell block in Albuquerque, New Mexico for an upcoming film.

Leave a Reply