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Ken Loach, Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, Alice Walker ... protest TIFF's complicity in Israel re-branding

September 3, 2009

The Globe and Mail -Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009

 An international group of more than 50 prominent filmmakers, writers, artists and academics –including Ken Loach, David Byrne, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker, Jane Fonda,Wallace Shawn and Danny Glover – has signed a letter protesting the TorontoInternational Film Festival’s decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv andthe work of 10 Israeli filmmakers.

 

The Globe and Mail -Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009

 An international group of more than 50 prominent filmmakers, writers, artists and academics –including Ken Loach, David Byrne, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker, Jane Fonda,Wallace Shawn and Danny Glover – has signed a letter protesting the TorontoInternational Film Festival’s decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv andthe work of 10 Israeli filmmakers.

 

The letter is to bepublished online Thursday, with a call for additional signatories.

 

“As members of theCanadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we aredeeply disturbed by [TIFF’s] decision to host a celebratory spotlight on TelAviv,” the letter begins. “We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not,has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.”

 

The letter, coming onthe virtual eve of the festival’s 34th edition, follows Canadian filmmaker JohnGreyson’s decision last week to pull his short documentary, Covered, from theTIFF lineup to protest the festival’s decision to launch its new City to Cityprogram by focusing on Tel Aviv.

 

 “We do notprotest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City,” the newletter states. “Nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should beunwelcome at TIFF. However … we object to the use of such an importantinternational festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of … an apartheid regime.”

 

The new missivecontends that TIFF organizers have, wittingly or unwittingly, been complicit ina million-dollar ‘Brand Israel’ PR campaign to change negative perceptions ofthe state of Israel.

 

The artists allegethat the campaign is designed to “take the focus off Israel’s treatment ofPalestinians” and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture.

 

The letter includesendorsements by several Israeli filmmakers and at least one Palestinian-Israeli director, Elia Suleiman, with a film in this year’s festival – TheTime that Remains. He is not, however, withdrawing the film.

 

Last week, respondingto Greyson’s protest, TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey insisted that the Israeligovernment had played no role in developing the new program.

 

“There was no pressurefrom any outside source,” wrote Mr. Bailey, in a letter posted on the TIFFwebsite. “This focus is a product only of TIFF’s programming decisions. Wevalue that independence and would never compromise it.” A TIFF spokesman todaydeclined to add to that statement.

 

However, two otherCanadian filmmakers, producer Robert Lantos and Emmy-award winning documentarian Simcha Jacobovici, weighed in.

 

“[TIFF] deservesapplause for its refusal to cater to the agenda of biased individuals with anaxe to grind,” Mr. Lantos said in a statement.

 

Mr. Lantos, currentlyoverseeing production of Barney’s Version, the Mordecai Richlernovel, said Mr. Greyson’s “hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Israel is the only statein the Middle East where films are made freely and without censorship of anysort [and] the only country in the region where a gay positive film like Mr.Greyson’s could be produced and freely shown”

 

Mr. Jacobovici, aToronto filmmaker who recently moved with his family to Israel, noted in astatement that the Palestinian government in Gaza had recently called a U.N.proposal to teach the Holocaust in Palestinian schools a war crime. “Why doesGreyson want to align himself with Holocaust deniers?”

 

Shmulik Maoz, anIsraeli director whose much-acclaimed film Lebanon will playat TIFF, said today that “film festivals should be above” discussions aboutboycotts and protests. “Trying to shut people’s mouths is not smart. In anyevent, most of the filmmakers in the City to City program are as critical ofthe Israeli government as anybody.”

 

Many of the voicesprotesting TIFF’s focus on Tel Aviv are part of a wider campaign, thePalestinian- led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Among them isToronto writer and political activist Naomi Klein who said today that it“strains credulity” to think that TIFF’s decision to spotlight Tel Aviv was notconnected to the Israeli PR campaign. Such a programming decision “feedsIsrael’s foreign policy goals and presents Israeli society as more diverse andopen than it actually is,” she said.

 

A more nuanced position perhaps was voiced by Berkeley filmmaker Deborah Kaufman, who said inan e-mail statement that while the Brand Israel campaign “blurs the linebetween public relations and crass propaganda,” the City to City programincluded Assi Dayan’s brilliant Life According to Agfa, “which Isee as an attack on the entire Zionist enterprise, and Eytan Fox’s TheBubble, a provocative fantasia on failed dreams,” films that allow“audiences to make their own judgments about Israeli politics.”

 

“I also want to push change,”Ms. Kaufman said. “But I feel our strength as film activists is to promotedebate and critical thought through engagement, not silencing.”

 

September 3, 2009
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