The mayor of Miami Beach in Florida has threatened to terminate the lease of a local arthouse cinema in retaliation for screening documentary Os
The mayor of Miami Beach in Florida has threatened to terminate the lease of a local arthouse cinema in retaliation for screening documentary Oscar winner No Other Land.
Mayor Steven Meiner is seeking to kick the O Cinema off city land and halt city funding for the non-profit after it held several screenings of the film, which was made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective and depicts the demolition by Israel of Palestinian settlements in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank.
According to the Miami Herald, which broke the story, Meiner sent a newsletter to local residents on Tuesday in which he described No Other Land as “a false, one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents”.
According to the Herald the mayor has introduced legislation to terminate the lease and city commissioners will vote on the measure next Wednesday (March 19).
O Cinema CEO/CCO Vivian Marthell initially told the mayor that she would not proceed with a screening, writing in a letter dated March 6 that while she wanted to bring Oscar-winning films to her audience, she had decided not to go ahead due to “the concerns of antisemitic rhetoric”.
However the following day Marthell did a U-turn and said she was going ahead with a scheduled screening last Friday [March 7], and more next week. In an email to the Herald, Marthell said she was not proceeding in an act of political alignment but in “a bold reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard, even, and perhaps especially, when it challenges us”. Four screenings on March 18 and 19 are listed as sold out on the cinema’s website.
No Other Land is critical of Israeli policy and remains without a US distributor, who have been wary of engaging with highly sensitive political subjects.
Co-directors Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor enlisted the facilitate of Cinetic Media, who used their awards season expertise to get the film onto the Academy’s documentary shortlist last December and brought on Michael Tuckman Media to book cinemas across the United States.
To date it has grossed more than $1m at the North American box office – more than double the grosses of the other four Oscar-nominated documentaries combined – and a further $300,000 through international distributors licensed by Autlook.
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