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Lynn Hershman Leeson's work exists within the cinema of ideas, a lonely outpost at best and one likely to remain that way. But as her convention-defying documentary "Strange Culture" makes the festival circuit and finds the occasional arthouse programmer intrepid enough to book it, younger filmmakers should be looking to Hershman Leeson for lessons on how to reinvent old forms while at the same time telling an urgently topical story -- in this case, that of Steve Kurtz, a critic of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who stands accused of bioterrorism by the government.

The troubling tale of Kurtz, associate professor of art at SUNY/Buffalo and a founding member of the activist Critical Art Ensemble, might have easily, and even provocatively, been told via the standard documentary apparatus of hindsight, updates and talking heads. But Hershman Leeson sidesteps legal restrictions on a defendant discussing an ongoing case by casting real-life characters with real-life actors.

Kurtz, who appears as himself, is also played by Thomas Jay Ryan ("Henry Fool"). Tilda Swinton (who has appeared in Hershman Leeson's "Conceiving Ada" and "Teknolust") is Kurtz's wife, Hope, whose sudden death due to heart failure in 2004 opened Kurtz's home and makeshift lab to suspicious medics, inept FBI agents, accusations of bioterrorism and a criminal case that the government still refuses to drop despite the feebleness of its arguments.

Expertly shot by Hiro Narita, the film circles around the case itself, establishing the work of the Kurtzes in creating art installations that critiqued and informed about the genetic modification of the food supply, the lack of food labeling in the United States and the power of the U.S. agricultural lobby.

The unavoidable implication is that Kurtz, as an artist and critic, was inconvenient to the food industry and an obvious target for paranoia-happy feds; hence, his years-long prosecution for possession of items -- mutated flies, for instance -- that were easily available over the Internet.

Hershman Leeson is as interested in reinventing the doc form as she is in publicizing Kurtz's case (and that of co-defendant Dr. Robert Ferrell, a former chair of the graduate genetics department at the U. of Pittsburgh). The director not only breaks the fourth wall, she reduces it to plaster dust. It's always clear that actors are playing real people -- the actors even discuss their characterizations with the real people they're portraying, and Swinton talks on the phone with the real-life Kurtz.

Hershman Leeson's own activist cinema eliminates the docu drone so often emanating from well-intentioned but formulaic nonfiction films. Kurtz, by making installations that criticized government ignorance and corruption, brought down on his head the wrath of government -- and became his own art project. Hershman Leeson gets it. And so will viewers of "Strange Culture."

Camera (color, DV), Hiro Narita; music, the Residents; production designer, Ben Leon; sound designer, Dan Olmsted; sound recordist, Lauretta Molitor; assistant director, Lise Swenson; second unit camera, Charlie Kuttner, Swenson, Unsu Lee; casting, Jennifer Dean. Reviewed at Wilshire screening room, Beverly Hills, Nov. 9, 2006. (In Sundance Film Festival -- New Frontier.) Running time: 75 MIN.