Jim Finn

Born - St. Louis, Missouri

"Steeped in the obsolete language of revolutionary art," The New York Times said Jim Finn's films "often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe." His award-winning movies have been called "Utopian comedies" and "trompe l'oeil films". The trilogy of communist features is in the permanent collection of the MoMA, and he has had retrospectives in seven countries. His movies have screened widely at festivals like Sundance, Rotterdam, Sao Paulo, AFI and Edinburgh as well as museums and cinematheques.

He has been making films, videos, revolutionary needlepoint pillows and photographs for over a decade. His first feature film 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. His second feature La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo was put on the Village Voice's Top 10 Year in Experimental Film. And Variety called The Juche Idea, his film about a North Korean art residency, "brilliant" and said all three films "upturn notions of documentary and fiction, propaganda thought, reality and restaging, and even what an 'experimental film' actually is."

He is featured in a 2010 Phaidon Press book called Take 100—The Future of Film: 100 New Directors. He was born in St. Louis and teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. 

Artist Collection List

Title Year Runtime Collection
Christmas with Chávez 2012 2 minutes Single Titles
Chums from Across the Void 2015 17 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
comunista! 2001 3 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
Decision 80 2003 10 minutes Single Titles
Dick Cheney in a Cold, Dark Cell 2009 2 minutes 40 seconds Single Titles
el güero 2001 3 minutes Single Titles
Encounters with Your Inner Trotsky Child 2013 21 minutes 10 seconds Single Titles
Great Man and Cinema 2009 3 minutes 55 seconds Single Titles
Interkosmos 2006 1 hour 11 minutes Single Titles
Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 1 2003 12 minutes 30 seconds Single Artist Compilations
Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 2 2012 28 minutes 35 seconds Compilations, Single Artist Compilations
La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo 2007 1 hour Single Titles
Presidents and Elections 2004 58 minutes 43 seconds Curated Compilations
Sharambaba 1999 3 minutes Single Titles
Sunday School with Franz Hinkelammert 2012 50 minutes 20 seconds Interviews, Single Titles
super-max 2003 13 minutes Single Titles
The Annotated Field Guide of Ulysses S. Grant 2020 1 hour 1 minute 5 seconds Single Titles
The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology 2023 1 hour 3 minutes 52 seconds New Releases, Single Titles
The Drunkard's Lament 2018 40 minutes 15 seconds Single Titles
The Juche Idea 2008 1 hour 2 minutes Single Titles
wüstenspringmaus 2002 3 minutes Single Titles
Zinoviev’s Tube: Tape 2 of the Inner Trotsky Child series 2014 22 minutes 18 seconds Single Titles