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Kurtz documentary to be screened at Sundance
A documentary film about UB faculty member Steve Kurtz will be among 71 short films to be screened next month at the Sundance Film Festival's 2007 Independent Film and World Cinema Competitions.
The film, "Strange Culture," was made by award-winning filmmaker Lyn Herschman Leeman and features Tilda Swinton and Peter Coyote. It will make its world premiere at Sundance.
The film follows the surreal experiences of Kurtz, associate professor in the Department of Visual Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, who awoke one morning in 2004 to find his wife dead of cardiac arrest. Police were called when EMTs found Petri dishes, bacterial cultures and scientific equipment, all of which Kurtz uses in art installations that examine practices, political context, social circumstances and ethical factors involved in the field of biotechnology. The authorities who responded to his 911 call found his art supplies suspicious and Kurtz was arrested and charged with bioterrorism. The charges have not been dropped; Kurtz faces up to 20 years in prison.
The festival's 71 short films were selected from 4,445 submissions from 19 countries. They include dramatic, documentary and animated films whose stories range from the plight of fallen cartoon heroes to the tale of a rat in the Manhattan subways and a mother's search for her son in hell.
The festival will run from Jan. 18-28. From Jan. 18 through April 18, a selection of about 50 shorts will be available on the Sundance Web site at http://www2.sundance.org/.
Gottdiener awarded fellowship
The Lady Davis Fellowship Trust has awarded Mark Gottdiener, professor of sociology, an endowed fellowship to support his residency at the Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, during the Spring 2007 semester.
While in Israel, Gottdiener, an expert on urban culture and policy, will study spatial and housing issues. He also plans research into what he calls the "globalization of anti-Israelism," which he says is "a diversionary strategy of Islamic fundamentalism and failed left-wing politics."
The Lady Davis Fellowship Trust, named for a noted Canadian philanthropist, was established 33 years ago to provide the opportunity for leading scientists and scholars, doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from around the world—regardless of nationality, gender or field of scholarship-to teach, study and participate in research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa.
Gottdiener is an internationally regarded scholar in the field of urban sociology and cultural studies. He specializes in cultural semiotics and popular culture, and how cultural issues are related to social problems. His work in socio-spatial analysis has been an important contribution to the theory of urban sociology. In February he was recognized by his peers with a special session devoted to his work at the 2006 meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society.
He is the award-winning author of numerous journal articles and of 16 notable books on such issues as the culture of air travel, the sociology of travel and tourism, the social development of Las Vegas and the origins, nature and future of themed environments in our information-overloaded world. Among the best-known are "The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions and Commercial Spaces" and the textbook "The New Urban Sociology," now in its third edition.