Year: 2007
Director: Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Writer: Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Cinematographer: Hiro Narita
Cast: Thomas Jay Ryan, Tilda Swinton, Peter Coyote, Josh Kornbluth, Steve Kurtz
Running Time: 75 min.
Strange Culture explores the dark intersection of artistic freedom and a justice system run amok. Watching the film is like spending 70 minutes inside the head of the illegitimate son of Philip K Dick and Franz Kafka, made all the more frightening because everything in the story is true.
This documentary examines the case of Steve Kurtz, a college professor and artist who made the mistake of calling 911 when his wife died of a heart attack in her sleep. When the paramedics arrived, they didn’t like the looks of the professor’s art supplies: petri dishes containing bacteria he had ordered over the internet for an exhibit on genetically-modified crops. Faster than you can say “Patriot Act”, the FBI arrived in hazmat suits and impounded Kurtz’s belongings, including his house, his books, and his wife’s body, and Kurtz found himself arrested as a bioterrorist. Despite mounting evidence of Kurtz’s innocence, the case is still dragging on over two and a half years later.
Kurtz’s lawyer would not allow him to discuss significant portions of the case against him, so director Lynn Hershman-Leeson has taken a creative approach. In addition to documentary staples such as news footage and talking-head interviews, she uses comic book drawings and actors to portray Kurtz and his wife. Variety says, “Hershman-Leeson is as interested in reinventing the doc form as she is in publicizing Kurtz’s case…(she) not only breaks the fourth wall, she reduces it to plaster dust.”
Film Threat’s Mark Bell adds, “Strange Culture is an important heads-up to what is going on in our country right now in the name of national security, and a brilliant statement on artistic freedom and the dangers it faces.” The film was an Official Selection at both this year’s Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, and won the Cinema of Conscience Award at Wine Country Film Festival 2007.
