Event

HRWFF: Strange Culture

Strange Culture chronicles the breathtaking miscarriage of justice that has befallen Steve Kurtz, a college professor, artist, and member of the politically charged art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble. In 2004 as Kurtz was preparing an interactive exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that would have allowed participants to test food labeled organic for the presence of genetically modified organisms, his wife tragically died from heart failure. Distraught, Kurtz called 911, but when the police arrived and saw the scientific materials for the exhibition-all legally purchased-they called the FBI. Dozens of agents in haz-mat suits searched his home, impounded his computers, books, cat, and even his wife's body, and held Kurtz as a suspected bio-terrorist. Three years later, he faces up to 20 years in prison on mail and wire fraud charges relating to his acquisition of materials for the art exhibit. Filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson creatively enlists actors Thomas Jay Ryan, Tilda Swinton, Josh Kornbluth, and Peter Coyote to dramatize part of the story that Kurtz cannot legally discuss, while skillfully interweaving news footage, animation, testimonials, and footage of Kurtz himself-creating a fascinating, highly provocative documentary about post-9/11 paranoia and the risks artists face when their work questions government policies. *Official Selection, Berlin International Film Festival 2007
Film's website: http://www.strangeculture.net