STRANGE CULTURE Scrutinized under the Petri dish

In an age of suspect. In an era of fear. In a time of target. We live in a strange culture. When the federal government accuses an internationally acclaimed artist and professor of bioterrorism, FBI agents in Hazmat suits search his house. The event was prompted by the death of Professor Steve Kurtz's wife, Hope Kurtz, from heart failure. Kurtz and collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, currently await a trial date.

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson brings this story to the forefront in her documentary film STRANGE CULTURE. The film intertwines reenactments of Kurtz and his wife, played by Thomas Jay Ryan and Tilda Swinton, with actor Peter Coyote and Steve Kurtz himself talking about the daunting situation.

Hershman Leeson is a multi-hyphenate artist in photography, video, film, installation, and computer-based media art. An internationally renowned award-winning artist, she talks about the experience as a female film- maker. In the art world she experienced discrimination and expected it in the film world. But her focus is on the work, not on an assumed identity or construct. Hershman Leeson confides in what so many independent filmmakers endure, "My struggle is doing the work - finding the money, energy, time, and support to get it done, shown, and distributed."

Her background in the visual arts helped shape the way she makes films. She did not go to film school, but her acceptance into the Sundance screenwriting lab, perhaps gave shape to the blending of actors and the documentary story of STRANGE CULTURE. Hershman Leeson delves into being "marginalized" in the art world, and felt film "offered a wider audience with tremendous potential as a medium for the kind of work I believed in."