Interkosmos (2006)

Director: Jim Finn
Writer: Jim Finn
Stars: Dean DeMatteis, Jim Finn, Nandini Khaund

Interkosmos is a musical documentary-style film about the East German space program-a program with the energy and creativity of the Soviet arts scene of the 1920s and a bit of the hippie sensibility from West Germany of the early 1970s. The story is about a failed space colonization mission called "wundertüte" and is told through narration, dialogue, letters, and period songs.

A cosmonaut romance set aboard a 1970s East German space mission to colonize the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, Interkosmos weaves together lovingly faked archival footage, charmingly under-motivated musical numbers, propagandistic maxims ("Capitalism is like a kindergarten of boneless children"), stop-motion animation (of a suitably crude GDR-era level), a Teutonic (and vaguely Herzogian) voice-over, and a superb garage-y Kraut-rock score (by Jim Becker and Colleen Burke). Finn's deadpan is immaculately bone-dry, and his antiquarian fastidiousness is worthy of Guy Maddin.

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