Interkosmos

Interkosmos is a musical documentary-style film about the East German space program-a program with the energy and creativity of the Soviet arts scene of the 1920s and a bit of the hippie sensibility from West Germany of the early 1970s. The story is about a failed space colonization mission called "wundertüte" and is told through narration, dialogue, letters, and period songs. A tongue-in-cheek homage to an East German space project that never was, this delightful debut feature from American visual artist Finn blends archival newsreel footage with musical interludes (think, Busby Berkeley meets Erich Honecker), to capture a genuine sense of surreal fun, as GDR astronauts venture, not merely into Earth's orbit (big deal!), but farther afield: aiming to colonise the moons of Jupiter and Saturn in the name of International Communism. Perfectly capturing the requisite tone - all the self-glorifying hyperbole and grim seriousness of the Brezhnev-era Communist Bloc - this is priceless. Look out for the Clangers-like GDR-TV animation (The Little Space Pig). Oh, and that groovy hockey team dance sequence. Jim Finn's Interkosmos, a retro gust of Communist utopianism, is set to open the New York Underground Film Festival on March 8. A cosmonaut romance set aboard a 1970s East German space mission to colonize the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, Interkosmos weaves together lovingly faked archival footage, charmingly undermotivated musical numbers, propagandistic maxims ("Capitalism is like a kindergarten of boneless children"), stop-motion animation (of a suitably crude GDR-era level), a Teutonic (and vaguely Herzogian) voiceover, and a superb garage-y Kraut-rock score (by Jim Becker and Colleen Burke). Finn's deadpan is immaculately bone-dry, and his antiquarian fastidiousness is worthy of Guy Maddin. (VILLAGE VOICE REVIEW)