Press Kit
Hi-Rez

Restricted, but Not Deterred

"....'The Juche Idea', by American experimental filmmaker Jim Finn, uses the theories of Kim Jong-il to satirize the process of art making under both socialist and capitalist systems... Steeped in the obsolete language of revolutionary art, Mr. Finn's meticulous, deadpan mockumentaries often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe..."

It’s Not Quite Hollywood Above the 38th Parallel

"Jim Finn, maker of “artist films” (his own phrase, only partly ironic), will confound most moviegoers with “The Juche Idea,” his latest short-feature-length riff on radical-utopian notions of cinema. Not quite fiction but definitely not a documentary, it’s a bit like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch devoted to the film theories of North Korea’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il...."

TAKE 100: The Future of Film: 100 New Directors (Phaidon Press)

"…Jim Finn's La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo (2007) must be considered one of the most provocative films of the decade. By questioning dogma that preaches to the converted, the film induces a crisis in the viewer who is in search of comfort and speedy comprehension. Finn seeks to retrace the challenging paths which political films once traveled but which have now become overcrowded freeways. The modernity of La Trinchera lies in how Finn stays away from the tried and true without resorting to forms from ten, twenty or even thirty years ago, ones that are often presented as novel but in practice amounts to amnesia. Finn draws on these forms from the past but twists them around…" (from the essay by Sergio Wolf)
pdf link here

The Juche Idea

"The evidence that current filmmaking is brimming with original, standard-breaking creations has to include the work of Jim Finn, whose brilliant "The Juche Idea"... effectively completes a trilogy of ultra-compact features that boldly upturn notions of documentary and fiction, propaganda thought, reality and restaging, and even what an "experimental film" actually is. To say that these films open up new possibilities for satire, ideas and language isn't an overstatement."

Comedy of Errors

"...the filmmaker's "utopian comedies," as they have been called, reveal as much about the savage follies of democratic societies as the despotic governments they claim as subjects..."

Fun with Monoliths

"...Jim Finn's funny and weirdly endearing the Juche Idea, a sui generis genre-straddler that screens at the Museum of Modern Art..."

Cahiers du Cinema Spain: Utopía Yanqui

Spanish-language article about the The Juche Idea, La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo, and Interkosmos. Plus an interview (including translation).

Jim Finn, Communist Dreamer, Makes Up a Better World, One Movie At a Time

"Marching to the sound of his own drummer into the radiant future, Jim Finn is the solitary vanguard of post-Communist Communist cinema. Each of this enigmatic artist’s three low-budget features has been a fastidious, jerry-built re-creation of an ideological fantasyland..."

Entrevista Jim Finn

An interview printed in Buenos Aires' largest circulation newspaper's weekly cultural magazine. (Summer 2008)

Korea Daily

An interview in New York's largest Korean-language newspaper about the The Juche Idea. English translation available here

Incite! Journal: Interview with Jim Finn

Avant-Garde 2007

"...A crypto-retro-Marxist faux-documentation of one day in a Peruvian women's prison populated by Shining Path Maoists, Trinchera has the flattened feel and relentless tempo of a long-lost artifact of low-tech propaganda... its compulsive ambition only furthers its enigmas."

La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo

"...Viewers arriving late will wonder what they've stumbled into, for Finn's simulation of an actual Maoist cadre is utterly convincing..."

La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo

"...a fertile cinematographic intervention, with its own energy and mystery that forms part of a novel genre, a kind of Brechtian theatre piece and essay film, but without commentary or reflections from director..."

Village Voice: Interkosmos

"Jim Finn's Interkosmos, a retro gust of Communist utopianism..."

Interkosmos

"A delightfully tongue-in-cheek homage to a fictional East German space project, Jim Finn's "Interkosmos" uses recreated newsreels combined with musical interludes to resurrect the '70s in all its Brezhnev-era glory..."

art.es

Bilingual article in a Spanish art magazine about the The Juche Idea, La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo, and Interkosmos.

Additional Interkosmos press

AFI Film Fest 2008
(4:34)

Filmmaker interview for The Juche Idea at the American Film Institute Festival

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008
(5:34)

"Getting your film out there and more..." interview for The Juche Idea

Planeta Cine
(0:32)

Filmmaker interview for La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo on Spanish TV