Benefit Screening of “Strange Culture” for CAE Trial Fund

Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 7pm

Market Arcade Film & Art Center

639 Main St., Buffalo NY

You don’t have to be paranoid for ‘Strange Culture’ to scare the hell out of you. - Reuters

A special benefit screening of “Strange Culture”, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s critically-acclaimed new documentary about Buffalo artist Steven Kurtz, will take place on Saturday Sept 8, 2007 at 7pm at the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center, as a co-presentation with Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center. Tickets are $10, and all proceeds will go to the Critical Art Ensemble Trial Fund. The documentary, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival,
will have its Buffalo theatrical run at the Market Arcade September 7-13th. The Market Arcade is located at 639 Main Street in downtown Buffalo, NY.

Professor Kurtz will be present to answer questions after the special Benefit Screening on September 8.

The Case:

Strange Culture (2007, 75min) chronicles the surreal nightmare of Steven Kurtz, an art professor at SUNY Buffalo and a founding member, with his late wife, Hope, of the internationally exhibited art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) critical-art.net Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have hosted CAE’s participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it. In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing to present Free Range Grain, a project examining GM agriculture, at a group show called The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Police who responded to Steve Kurtz’s 911 call deemed the couple’s art suspicious, and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was illegally detained as a suspected “bioterrorist” as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife’s body. Today Kurtz and long-time collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, face trumped-up charges of mail fraud and wire fraud, punishable, thanks to the PATRIOT Act, by up to 20 years in prison.

The Documentary:

Since the ongoing nature of the case prevents Kurtz from discussing its details, Hershman Leeson has enlisted actors to dramatize parts of the story, skillfully interweaving dialogue with news footage, animation, interviews, testimonials, and footage of Kurtz himself. Tilda Swinton
(”Chronicles of Narnia” “Broken Flowers”) and Thomas Jay Ryan (”Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind”) play Hope and Steve Kurtz, and Peter Coyote (”ET” “Erin Brockovich”) plays Dr. Robert Ferrell. “Strange Culture” poses questions that are more universal than local at this point in our nation’s history. How can artists whose works are critical of government policy
continue to create freely given the escalating paranoia of the state? What liberties do we loose to protect freedom? The case of Kurtz and Ferrell is of concern not only to scientists, artists, and activists, but to anyone interested in contributing to vital public debate about the actions of their government. More information about the film, including trailers, can be accessed on the web at www.strangeculture.net

The Benefit:

Buffalo Art Community Joins Worldwide Support of Kurtz and Ferrell Because the case threatens to establish dangerous precedent for artists and for anyone exercising their First Amendment rights, it has attracted worldwide attention, with fundraisers to support Kurtz and Ferrell organized on five continents. On September 8th, at 7pm, join the many cultural organizations, individual artists and scientists, and concerned citizens who have responded to this outrageous, politically-motivated case, to raise urgently needed money for Kurtz and Ferrell’s legal defense.

For more information about the case please visit
casedefensefund.org

The Market Arcade Film & Art Center is located in Downtown Buffalo. For more

information about the Benefit, please contact Carolyn Tennant

(carolyn@hallwalls.org), Media Arts Director at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts

Center: 716-854-1694

Buffalo’s own crazy man/director/actor, Vincent Gallo is dating a 16 year old! Good for him.
This is what he has to say about it:

“With the psychotic, middle-aged Madonna out there on the loose buying up all the stolen Negro babies in Africa, I felt it my social and humanitarian duty to take in any young, beautiful and sexy orphaned Jew teens running wild in Beverly Hills. Cory’s a great kid, and I’m proud to be her daddy.”

…well then…I think it’s clear Vincent Gallo hasn’t changed a bit. And we wouldn’t have it anyother way!

I still haven’t seen it yet (and believe me, I’d like to) but I did a search for Vincent Gallo, Buffalo’s own *special* movie director, actor, musician, and came accross the trailer and interview for “The Brown Bunny” known as one of the 100 worst movies of all time. Roger Ebert blasted it in Cannes and he entered a war of words with Gallo. Gallo responded with a quip about Ebert’s weight Which led to Ebert getting the last word…

“I may be fat but some day I will be thin, but Vincent will always be the director of The Brown Bunny”

I’ve always been facinated by this hometown character, this video shows his true colors.
PS-watch the part where he talks about his supporting actress Chloe Sevigny and what she has to do to “get in character”.
In an unrelated note I am co-anchoring a newscast from my dorm with WB49’s Sara Bishop, but she needs to “get in character” ahem.