[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="In Strange Culture, filmmaker Lynn Hershman-Leeson tackles the bizarre case of Steve Kurtz, an associate professor of art at SUNY/Buffalo and founding member of the award-winning art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble, whose interactive projects include the examination of biotechnology and the issues surrounding it. Kurtz’s life suffered an upheaval of Kafkaesque proportions following the unexpected death of his wife, Hope, of heart failure in May 2004."][/caption]

Technically, the U.S. government’s sham, extortionist case against prominent artist and activist Steve Kurtz has been over since June 11, 2008, when the Department of Justice failed to appeal the judge’s dismissal of the case against him, but the gravity of the orginal assault on creative freedom and civil rights can never be over estimated, and the toll it took on Kurtz and his colleagues is almost impossible to fathom.

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