Wholphin

Join us for Wholphin’s return to the Silent Movie Theatre on Tuesday, April 29th. We will be screening a selection of films from the upcoming sixth issue of Wholphin, including a documentary about a class of Chinese third graders who hold a democratic election for classroom monitor and in the process end up hilariously, if unintentionally, mocking 300 years of American Politics; a beautifully black, comic exploration of 70s England that isn’t, but could easily be, the prequel to A Clockwork Orange; the winner of the Wholphin Award at this year’s SXSW, Benh Zeitlin’s Glory at Sea; an animated fake rock star taking on a heroin-addicted carnival monkey; drunk bees and more!

Tuesday, April 29th at 8PM
Silent Movie Theatre
611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles

Wholphin No 4 featured an excerpt from Lynn Hershman Leeson’s brilliant, hybrid documentary-film, Strange Culture, in which the FBI mistakenly accuses artist, Steve Kurtz, as a bioterrorist. Now, after four years of interrogations, lawyers fees and trials, the case has finally been thrown out.

The New York Times reported on April 21st: “A judge threw out charges Monday against a college art professor accused of improperly obtaining biological materials for an exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was ”insufficient on its face.”

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom.

”Obviously this is a weight off his back, but he still had to suffer through this for four years,” said Kurtz’s attorney, Paul Cambria. ”The last thing this guy is is a bioterrorist.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo said it was considering an appeal but otherwise declined to discuss the ruling.

Kurtz was indicted in 2004 following what began as an anti-terrorism investigation after police saw lab equipment in Kurtz’s home while responding to the death of his wife, Hope.

Although investigators determined that lab equipment was part of his art work, he was indicted a month later. The charges carried a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Kurtz was accused of plotting with Robert Ferrell, former chairman of the University of Pittsburgh’s human genetics department, to improperly obtain potentially harmful organisms. Ferrell was fined $500 in February after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of mailing an injurious article to Kurtz.

See the article here.

Tomorrow - TUESDAY - at the Silent Movie Theatre in LA - a rare appearance

“An Arkansas auteur… imagine if Fellini had lived in a trailer in Arkansas instead of Rome.” - The London Times

“Phil is simply a person who needs to create. He could have just as likely picked up a knife and whittled a wooden pig, or painted the Rapture on the side of a barn. Instead, he sat in the guard shack at the gravel pit every night, writing and planning his movies.” - Dub Cornett, Oxford American

Phil Chambliss is America’s first folk-art filmmaker. He’s lived his entire life in Calhoun County, Arkansas. He never went to film school or college, never took a class or read a book on filmmaking. The films he managed to see - Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More, the entire Peyton Place television special, and a particular episode of The Rifleman in which Lee Van Cleef plays Johnny Drago - led him to take the 95 bucks his then-wife had saved for a new icebox, and spend it instead on a movie camera. With camera in tow, he wrangled some friends into acting, and went on to create a body of work that includes dozens of bizarre, brilliant, idiosyncratic films, shot over the course of several decades. Phil’s films are a revelation, full of unexpected humor, complex social commentary, and a strong, almost suspended, sense of time and place. There is only one Phil Chambliss, and The Cinefamily is very proud to present the first Los Angeles presentation of his singular work.

see his films and hear him speak:
go to Cinefamily for tickets

Residents of Richmond, Virginia: Come see a selection of films from Wholphin Nos. 1 through 5, including a Wizard of Oz story reinterpreted in a world of evangelical mysticism, a band of Scottish 9-year-olds singing “Satan Rocks” at their county fair, a documentary about a 13-year-old Yemeni girl who refuses to wear her veil, an Academy Award–winning short, a squid birth, and more.

Sunday, April 6th at 3PM
The Firehouse Theatre, Richmond, VA
$5 Admission
Sponsored by Chop Suey Books and the James River Film Festival