Bigotry in the "Industry"

We've seen the Hollywood types spouting their opinions on politics and world events, but we don't expect them to ban other "artists" from showing their work....much. The rest of the world seems to have another take on the idea of showing works by citizens of countries whose politics they don't agree. Silencing enlightenment

(...) In Europe, film festivals have become battlegrounds, with curators blatantly discriminating against artists and subjecting their work to Stalinist-style scrutiny. In Europe, a film such as The Substitute might battle to reach the screen simply because of its country of origin. And it's not only Israelis who ought to be worried. In recent weeks, film festivals in Edinburgh, Dublin and Locarno (Switzerland) moved to cancel visits from Israeli directors. Meanwhile, Greece announced its withdrawal from the coming autumn film festival in Haifa, just as the Israeli city was suffering sustained rocket attacks from Hezbollah. And at the documentary film festival under way in Lussas, France, plans for a special program on Israeli films were scrapped and replaced with a program of Palestinian and Lebanese films. Festival chiefs explained the decision on the basis it was "difficult to look at films from the countries involved in the current war with the same degree of detachment". The moves were a response to pressure from pro-Palestinian groups, which used the war in Lebanon to push for a cultural boycott of the Jewish state. In an online petition launched in the war's last days, Palestinian artists urged the international community "to join us in the boycott of Israeli film festivals, Israeli public venues, and Israeli institutions supported by the Government, and to end all co-operation with these cultural and artistic institutions that to date have refused to take a stand against the Occupation (of the territories), the root cause for this colonial conflict". In a heavily subsidised industry such as film, this effectively means banning Israeli films and deeming their creators persona non grata. (...) Here's the inconvenient truth: many, if not most, of the Israeli films that end up on the festival circuit are strongly in opposition and quite a number are even co-productions with Palestinians. (...) One of the films cancelled at the Lussas festival was made by a Palestinian-Israeli who documents the lives of Israel's marginalised Arab minority. And Israeli director Yoav Shamir, who was advised ("for your own sake") not to attend this week's Edinburgh film festival, has been described as "a trenchant critic of his government's policies" and a previous film of his, Checkpoint, "explicitly pro-Palestinian".

Ah yes, the tolerance of the artist types....so refreshing.