KURTZ DOCUMENTARY TO PREMIERE AT SUNDANCE; GIOIA REAPPOINTED

The Sundance Film Festival has announced seventy-one short films set to screen next month, notes the Hollywood Reporter, including a documentary about the artist Steve Kurtz. The film, Strange Culture, by Lynn Herschman Leeson, follows Kurtz as he copes with the aftermath of being charged with bioterrorism in 2004 after his wife died of cardiac arrest and authorities found his art supplies suspicious. Tilda Swinton and Peter Coyote are featured in the film. The seventy-one shorts arrive from nineteen countries and were selected from 4,445 submissions. Elsewhere, the New York Times_ reports that the United States Senate has voted unanimously to reappoint Dana Gioia to a four-year term as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.