Is
one of Enver Hoxha’s infamous Albanian bunkers your idea of a happy zone or a
safe space? Then let Jim Finn whisk you away Calgon-style with his self-help
program for Reds weary in their nonexistent souls. However, only Trotskyites
need apply for Past Leftist Life Regression Therapy in Finn’s short
experimental essay film Chums from Across
the Void, which screens all day Friday as part of Projections Program A at
the 53rd New York Film Festival.
It
is time to get in touch with your past Bolshevik lives, with the help of
stylized stroboscopic cinematography and suitably distressed-looking archival
imagery. Perhaps you were Maria Spiridonova or “Little” Karl Radek. In any
event, you came to a bad end, but that is to be expected. By now, we all know
Revolution devours it children. So let the soothing Socialist visuals wash over
you and try to make something of it all.
Finn
digs his Commie iconography, but in past films like The Juche Idea it has been hard to determine whether this is
hipster kitsch or slyly subversive irony. However, Chums rather seems to lean towards the latter, given the painful
fate some of our Bolshevik spirit guides met at Stalin’s hand. The Albanian
bunker motif is also a possible “tell,” considering how wasteful and absurd the
“bunkerization” campaign was for the isolated Marxist state.