Canceled: Jeanne Finley's Beyond The Cosmodrome + Stefan Rusu's Soviet Architecture +

In the first of a co-bill on post-Soviet Central Asia, long-time San Fran cineaste Jeanne Finley interweaves a poignant group-portrait of some nine Kazakh orphans coming of age in the shadow of a nearby Cosmodrome. Herself a mother of a Kazakh adoptee, Finley conjures a complex yet lyrical sense of space and time from the majestic landscape of the Steppes, from the local traditional culture, from the imagination of rocket science, and from the teens’ own writings and performances. All followed by inspiring songs from the SF Threshold Choir! ALSO out of CCA, Moldavian-born Stefan Rusu takes up the theme of cosmonaut utopianism as well, in the North American debut of his 40 min. Return from the Future, in which we—like Stanislaw Lem’s cultured-shocked space-time voyager—re-visit the boldly Modernist “science fiction” buildings of Kyrgyzstan...to find the formerly ideologically charged edifices fallen into the shabby revisionism of the new free-market economy. Come early for the '79 Ukranian anomaly, Teenage Cosmonauts.*$8