A Hallwalls Artist-in-Residence Project (HARP)
Presented in person by the artist

"With a sense of craft and humor, Finn creates an unusual and fascinating examination of the underpinnings of North Korean culture and the effects of propaganda in cinema."
- Ann Arbor Film Festival

As part of his residency, HARP media artist Jim Finn continues his investigations of cinema, art, and propaganda, this time turning his attention to this North Korean ideology. In the late 1960's Kim Jong II guaranteed his succession as the Dear Leader of North Korea by adapting his father's Juche (pronounced choo-CHAY) philosophy to propaganda, film and art. Translated as self-reliance, Juche is a hybrid of Confucian and authoritarian Stalinist pseudo-socialism. The film is about a South Korean video artist who comes to a North Korean art residency to help bring Juche cinema into the 21st century. Inspired by the real-life story of the South Korean director kidnapped in the 70's to invigorate the North Korean film industry, the film follows Yoon Jung Lee, a young video artist invited to work at a Juche art residency [!!!] on a North Korean collective farm. The story is told through the films she made at the residency as well as interviews with a Bulgarian filmmaker and even a brief sci-fi movie. The film, which premiered at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, was the official closing film of the final New York Underground Film Festival. This screening is in conjunction with /The Imaginary Line/.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
"Jim Finn has made a name for himself...thanks to his feeling for irony and his capacity to shape something new from propaganda, news and other historic images. Not to forget his very dry sense of humour."
- Rotterdam International Film Festival

Jim Finn (b. St. Louis, 1968) is an artist whose films and videos use humor and historical fiction to examine communist ideology, capitalism and revolutionary art practices. His work has screened at festivals, museums, and cinematheques such as Rotterdam International, New York Underground, Edinburgh International, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and the Harvard Film Archive. His latest work is a series of feature-length films looking at Marxist ideology. The first of these, Interkosmos, was called "a retro gust of communist utopianism" by the Village Voice and "charming and fantastic, so full of rare atmospheres" by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. Variety called his follow-up film La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo "pure filmmaking legerdemain" and called the performances "astonishing."

Opening 5/17 at the Buffalo Arts Studio (7—10pm)

/The Imaginary Line/ is a series of exhibitions and screenings which explore the idea of nation-dividing borders to understand the political, cultural, and sociological issues that arise from these boundaries, and also explores borders as intangible, incorporeal delineations that exist within our everyday lives. This summer Hallwalls joins Buffalo Arts Studio and El Museo, to host a series of screenings in conjunction with /The Imaginary Line/ that will include works by Jim Finn, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Ursula Biemann. In August Hallwalls welcomes artist Fereshteh Toosi, who will be in Buffalo/Niagara Falls to create works that commemorate the 30th anniversary of Love Canal, declared a Federal State of Emergency by President Jimmy Carter in August, 1978.

At Hallwalls May-August:
5/15/08 at 8 p.m.
HARP artist Jim Finn presents The Juche Idea
6/20/08 at 8 p.m.
Border Art Classics by Guillermo Gómez-Peña: El Naftazteca: Cyber-Aztec TV for 2000 A.D. and The Great Mojado Invasion, Part 2 (The Second U.S. - Mexico War)
7/25/08 at 8 p.m.
Works by Ursula Biemann: Europlex and Performing the Border
8/8/08 at 8 p.m.
Love Canal Memorial screening presented by artist Fereshteh Toosi

At the Buffalo Arts Studio:
On exhibition from May 17—August 9, 2008, works by:
Paula Braswell, Peter Dykhuis, Shelley Niro, and Leandro Soto

At El Museo:
Border Film Project (May 30—July 22, 2008).
Opening Reception June 13, 8—10. On view through July 22, 2008