Strange Culture
2007, 75 minutes, Rated M
"How far will this contagion spread?"
The surreal nightmare of internationally-acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz began when his wife Hope died in her sleep of heart failure. Police who responded to Kurtz's emergency call deemed Kurtz's activist artworks suspicious and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was detained as a suspected "bioterrorist" as dozens of agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife's body. Kurtz and his wife Hope had campaigned against genetically-modified food through their art, and now even their artistic statements are being silenced. Is this an authorised, or even corporate-backed, attack on freedom of speech through the exercise of the Patriot act? Or right-wing bureaucracy gone mad in a post 9/11 world?
In this innovative documentary, Steve Kurtz's story is retold starring Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton as his late wife Hope. Today Kurtz and his long-time collaborator Dr, Robert Ferrell, former Chair of the Genetics Department at he University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, await a trial date.
- Director:
- Lynn Hershman Leeson [2],
- Starring:
- Tilda Swinton [20],
- Screen Formats:
- Widescreen
- Language and Sound:
- English 5.1 Dolby Digital
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