Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Strange Culture

For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, a film I helped write is at the San Francisco International Film Festival this year. It's playing at the Castro Theater on Saturday, April 28. Full information, other dates, and the blurb are here.

The movie is called Strange Culture, and it stars Thomas Jay Ryan, Tilda Swinton, and a very chatty Josh Kornbluth. It tells the ongoing, true story of artist Steve Kurtz, who has been a victim of Justice Department harrassment for two years. After his wife died unexpectedly, Steve woke to the horrible realization that he was a suspect in her death after authorities found bacterial cultures used in his art, as well as books on civil liberties abuses and the war on terror in his house. A day later, the cause of her death was determined to be an undiagnosed heart condition, and the Buffalo, NY police and health department publicly cleared Kurtz. But the Justice Department wasn't done with him. To this day, they refuse to drop a groundless case against him, opting instead to push for endless court date deferments, in hopes of either bankrupting Kurtz through legal fees and forcing him to cop a plea, or of the case fading from the public eye.

I'm credited as "Script Consultant" which means I wrote, rewrote, reconceptualized, and brainstormed with the director in the months up to and just after principal photography.

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