A series of showings of the documentary “No Other Land” at a single-screen art-house theater in Miami Beach has become a flash point of controversy.
Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner sent a letter dated March 5 to the O Cinema ahead of the screenings imploring the organization not to screen the film, which recently won the Academy Award for feature documentary. The mayor’s letter called it “a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.”
When the theater decided to screen the film despite his protests, Meiner put forth a formal resolution to the city commission to discontinue grant funding from the theater and, more crucially, to terminate its lease from the theater’s current location on city-owned property.
But in an unexpected twist, the mayor withdrew his own resolution at a Wednesday morning city commission meeting before there was a vote.
“I viewed this as a public safety measure,” Meiner said during the meeting by way of explaining his initial response..
Meiner added, “I’m also very appreciative of my colleagues. I felt we were in unity. Unity doesn’t mean we agree on every policy decision. Unity means that we are striving for what’s best for our city and for our community. You know, a couple of individuals joke that I made the movie more popular by doing what I did than the Academy Awards did. And they might be right. That was not my intent. I knew this would create a dialogue.”
The mayor’s actions have brought intense media scrutiny to the fate of the Florida theater. In a news conference on Tuesday, Vivian Martel, chief executive of O Cinema, said, “O Cinema will not be silenced and neither will our community. This is about more than just a film. It’s about the fundamental right of free expression, artistic integrity and the role of independent cinemas in our community.”
In an interview last week, Kareem Tabsch, co-founder of O Cinema and chair of the board of directors, said of the mayor’s actions, “It’s shocking. I don’t even know what other words to use. In the decade and a half that O Cinema has existed, we’ve never heard from an elected official commenting or questioning our programming, and certainly never anyone threatening action on any film we showed. So it was alarming because we were doing the same thing that we’ve done for nearly 15 years.”
O Cinema has occupied its current space since 2019 and Tabsch said he did not believe the organization would be able to find another venue in Miami Beach.
“It violates the 1st Amendment,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley. “The city, generally the government, can’t react to speech based on its content. Does that then mean that the city could say your movies have a liberal bias, therefore we’re going to take away your ability to show it? Or your movies criticize or praise Donald Trump, therefore we’re going to take away your license to do it? The government can’t make choices based on what speech to allow or disallow based on the viewpoint or the topic that’s expressed.”
Made by a collective of two Israeli and two Palestinian filmmakers, “No Other Land” captures the struggles of daily life in an area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, where Israeli settlers and soldiers attempt to force locals from their homes and land. The film also explores the budding friendship between two of the filmmakers, Basel Adra, a Palestinian, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli.
The interior of the O Cinema in Miami Beach.
(Antoine Heusse / O Cinema)
Tabsch is also a filmmaker who co-directed “Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado,” which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. His co-director on that film, Cristina Costantini, along with producer Alex Fumero, organized an open letter to the city of Miami Beach in support of O Cinema that as of Tuesday had more than 750 signatures, including filmmakers Michael Moore, Barry Jenkins, Phil Lord, Laura Poitras, Ezra Edelman, Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Alex Gibney.
“Especially in a city of refugees like Miami, a lot of people have escaped dictatorships and strongmen who’ve shut down dissenting opinions,” said Costantini in an interview Monday. “And so to see that happen there is truthfully shocking. And so anything we can do to fight it, I think is what we need to be doing.”
“This is a huge step in the wrong direction for that city,” said Fumero last week. “It has bigger implications than I think [the mayor] realizes. And it’s going to hurt not just O Cinema, but it’s going to hurt the people of Miami.”
Meiner had declared “No Other Land” to be “egregiously antisemitic” in a newsletter he released last week. Multiple attempts to contact the mayor were not responded to, including the specific question of where and when he watched the film.
In a statement, Abraham said, “When the mayor uses the word ‘antisemitism’ to silence Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality, he is emptying it out of meaning. I find that to be very dangerous.
“Censorship is always wrong,” Abraham’s statement continued. “We made this film to reach U.S. audiences from a wide variety of political views. I believe that once you see the harsh reality of occupation in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, it becomes impossible to justify it, and that’s why the mayor is so afraid of ‘No Other Land.’ It won’t work. Banning a film only makes people more determined to see it.”
O Cinema was being represented in the proceedings by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Community Justice Project.
“I do think it’s unfortunate that the lesson that some politicians seem to be taking from our current moment is that they can take whatever lawless action they like without any consequence,” said Daniel Tilley, legal director of the ACLU of Florida.
“It’s not for me to tell someone how to feel about the film and neither does the government get to decide how someone must feel about the film,” said Tilley. “Of course, the government can state its own view but it is not for the government to tell someone how they must feel about a movie, which is what they’re doing when they decide someone is not allowed to hear a particular perspective.
“If the mayor wants to speak loudly against this movie and against the owner of the movie theater for showing it, the mayor can speak loudly for doing that,” said Chemerinsky, “but he can’t punish the movie theater for the speech that it exhibits.”
When the mayor first sent a letter to the theater not to show “No Other Land” before any of the screenings had occurred, Martel initially responded by saying the venue would pull the film. Almost immediately, upon further reflection and consultation with the board and others, the decision was made to push ahead with showing the film.
“It’s not my job to dictate how anyone views a film or the feelings they walk away with,” said Tabsch. “It’s our job as an arts organization to present films that are engaging, provocative, thoughtful, that foster dialogue, films that are lauded and that audiences would maybe otherwise not have an opportunity to see. ‘No Other Land’ fits all of those categories.”
Screenings of “No Other Land” that are currently scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday are expected to move forward as planned. All screenings of the film at O Cinema have been sold out in advance.
