Lynn Hershman Leeson – Strange Culture

»Strange Culture« tells the story of how one man’s personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid and overzealous government. In 2004, Steve Kurtz (Thomas Jay Ryan), an Associate Professor of Art at the State University of New York, Buffalo, was preparing an exhibition on genetically modified food for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art when his wife, Hope (Tilda Swinton), died in her sleep of heart failure.

When paramedics noticed scientific paraphernalia in the home, they alerted the F.B.I.; within hours Mr. Kurtz found himself suspected of bioterrorism, his home quarantined, and his wife’s body removed for autopsy.

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson bends the nonfiction form to her own unconventional will, resulting in a compelling collage of re-enactments, news clips, and interviews that illuminate not only the implications of corporate meddling in the food chain but the insidiousness of just how quickly civilian behavior can garner suspicion.

Please note: The film screening will take place in English.