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Journeys Beyond the Cosmodrome

Jeanne C. Finley

2019 00:53:25 Kazakhstan, United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Activism , Documentary , Social Justice , Youth/Childhood

Description

On the vast Kazakhstan Steppes, nine 16-year-olds prepare to graduate from the Akkol orphanage. Rockets launched overhead from the nearby Cosmodrome inspire their dreams as they write about and perform their imagined future-selves. Guided by the nomadic spirit and natural beauty of the Steppes, the teens explore questions of time and truth in relation to the challenging reality of their lives. Traditional Kazakh culture, global iconography, and space travel are infused throughout their performances and imaginatively used as protective talismans on their journey into an uncertain adulthood.

Journeys Beyond the Cosmodrome is an expanded film project including photographs, video, and stories created with teenagers aging out of Kazakhstan’s Akkol Bolshoi orphanage into challenging futures. Over two summers, sixteen teenagers participated in writing, video and photographic workshops led by Lydia Matthews, Lyazzat Khanim and Jeanne C. Finley. After viewing scientific and fictional films on space travel, the students playfully performed their own versions of these stories with simple objects found at the orphanage.

Directed by Jeanne C. Finley in collaboration with Lyazzat Khanim. Music composed and performed by Kri Schlafer, Sound Design: Jim Mckee, On-line editor: Paul Hill.

About Jeanne C. Finley

Jeanne C. Finley is a media artist who works in experimental and documentary forms including film, video, photography, installation, internet, and site specific public works. Her work has been exhibited in international institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, SF and NY Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum and the George Pompidou Center. She has been the recipient of many grants including a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Foundation, Cal Arts/Alpert Award, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the Phelan Award.

Since 1989 she has worked in collaboration with John Muse on many installation and video projects including Flatland, 2007, Clockwork, 2006, and Catapult, 2005. Finley was an Artist-in-Residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis France In 2008 and The Headlands center for the arts in 2005. In 2001 she received an Arts-Link fellowship to Sarajevo to create a film and website with Bosnian media artists. During 1990 Finley received a Fulbright Fellowship to Yugoslavia where she directed programs for Radio/TV Belgrade. In 1994 she was an Artist-in-Residence in Istanbul, Turkey through a grant from the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Foundation.

Finley’s film and video credits include: Lost, 2006, Loss Prevention, 2000, O Night Without Objects, a Trilogy, 1998, A.R.M. Around Moscow, 1993, Involuntary Conversion, 1991 and Nomads at the 25 Door, 1991. These tapes have won awards at international festivals such as the San Francisco, Atlanta, Berlin Video Festival, Toronto, and World Wide Video Festival. Finley is a Professor of Media Studies at the California College of the Arts and currently lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter and son. Her gallery work is represented by the Patricia Sweetow Gallery and her films are distributed by Video Data Bank, Women Make Movies and Electronic Arts Intermix.