Strange Culture
by Lynn Hershman Leeson
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DVD details
Actor: Josh Kornbluth, Peter Coyote, Steve Kurtz, Thomas Jay Ryan, Tilda SwintonDirector: Lynn Hershman Leeson
Brand: New Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 75 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: DOCURAMA
Product features:
- In this moving and wildly innovative film, director Lynn Hershman Leeson tells the terrifying story of how one man's personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid and overzealous government. Art professor Steve Kurtz's nightmare began on May 11, 2004, when he awoke to find his wife Hope dead of a heart attack. Paramedics responding to his 911 call, suspicious of petri dishes and
DVD Reviews of Strange Culture
DVD Review: artistic freedom and political urgency
Summary: 5 Stars
Strange Culture
I've seen this docudrama twice now. It offers a penetrating yet quite understated commentary on the emergence of what author Bertram Gross once described as "friendly fascism" - not the jackboots, uniforms and screeching rhetoric, but our 'friendly protection' from terrorism, and at the same time our 'protection' from lingering anxieties concerning genetically modified foods. You wouldn't think all this would come together in a single FBI case, currently pending. But it has. In Buffalo, New York.
One of the poignant features of this film is the determinedly honest picture it paints of the warm but intermittently irritable relation between Steve Kurtz, the central surviving character in this tragedy, and his wife of many years (played by Tilda Swinton), the day before she suddenly died. So is the portrayal of the acute fears of a student of 'Middle Eastern' origin, as he decides whether or not to sign a petition of support for Kurtz, one of his most respected university instructors.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls... This film needs knowing.
Description of Strange Culture
In this moving and wildly innovative film, director Lynn Hershman Leeson tells the terrifying story of how one man's personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid and overzealous government.Art professor Steve Kurtz's nightmare began on May 11, 2004, when he awoke to find his wife Hope dead of a heart attack. Paramedics responding to his 911 call, suspicious of petri dishes and scientific paraphenalia in his house (materials for an art project on genetically modified food) contacted the FBI, and soon his world was turned upside down. Only hours after his wife s tragic death he was suddenly a murder suspect, an accused bioterrorist, and a pariah to all but his closest friends.
Told through a unique blend of interviews, documentary footage, and reconstructed scenes starring Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan, and Peter Coyote, Hershman s critically-acclaimed film is a sophisticated, look at how the traumatic events of 9/11 altered American society and undermined its long-held values.
Extras on the DVD include: Theatrical Trailer, Filmmaker Interviews, Outtakes and Filmmaker Biography.
Though Lynn Hershman Leeson?s third feature tackles weighty issues like national security and privacy rights, love plays an equal part in the picture. Three years after 9/11, Buffalo-based artist Hope Kurtz (played by Oscar winner Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton), dies from a heart attack. Her husband of 27 years, Steve (Henry Fool's Thomas Jay Ryan), yearns to mourn, but authorities notice bacteria-filled Petri dishes around their house and take him in for questioning (the Kurtz's subject was genetically modified food). Next, the FBI confiscates his computers, his cat--even his wife's body--before charging him and colleague Robert Ferrell (Peter Coyote) with bioterrorist intentions, culminating in indictments for mail and wire fraud. As in Hershman Leeson's previous projects with Swinton, Conceiving Ada and Teknolust, science and art co-mingle. This time, though, she merges interviews, dramatic recreations, and Kurtz himself, which initially proves distracting--he looks nothing like Ryan--but his first-person testimony adds weight to the actor's believable performance. Though the director grapples with big ideas, she never loses sight of the people behind them. Her intentionally one-sided portrait of an insular art world flirts with pretension, but for those truly concerned about the issues at hand--and the humans affected by them--Strange Culture will surely break a few hearts. At the time of filming, Kurtz's case remained unresolved, but the opening title conveys both optimism and respect: "This film is dedicated to Hope." Extras include an interview with the subject and a comprehensive profile of the filmmaker. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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