Space Oddity

Oleksiy Radynski’s Infinity According to Florian, which made its New York debut at the e-flux screening room in April, is a film about many things: Soviet sci-fi, oligarchical capital, simping politicians, labor, speculative real estate, historical preservation, color theory, the folly of anthropocentrism, infinity, if not the future. But mainly it’s about a man who is, or was, many things: architect, painter, filmmaker, composer, conlanger, contrarian, synesthete, survivor. At ninety years old, Florian Illich Yuriev wages a struggle against a shadowy Russian magnate to preserve his greatest work, the Kyiv Institute of Information, built in 1971 on the orders of KGB agents who were evidently keen readers of Ivan Yefremov. The complex is famed for its 1950s spaceship-cum–assembly hall that the oligarch hopes to appropriate as a (gilded!) ornament for the enormous retail emporium he’s building across the street. Yuriev shuffles back and forth from his studio to one pointless city council meeting after the next. He uses his airtime to denounce commerce and promote his c…