O Cinema South Beach.
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O Cinema
O Cinema South Beach, an independent, non-profit movie theater, has been showing sold-out screenings of the controversial, Oscar-winning film No Other Land. But the Miami Beach’s mayor calls the documentary “anti-semitic” and is now trying to cut off the city’s funding and lease to the cinema, which is operating on city property.
“The threats of closing a cinema down because some people do not like the films we show certainly sounds like censorship to me,” O Cinema’s co-founder and board of directors chair Kareem Tabsch told NPR. “We’ve always shown films that have sparked real strong sentiments and real strong opinions…. Throughout the years, we’ve certainly had vocal audience members or community members who’ve questioned some programming choices… But what we have never encountered is elected officials trying to dictate what we should and should not be showing. That’s certainly a first.”
No Other Land won this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was made by Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and their team. From 2019 to 2023, they chronicled ongoing bulldozing of homes and buildings in the Masafer Yatta community on the West Bank. Their film focuses on Adra and his family and neighbors, whose ancestral homeland was taken over by Israeli forces to become a closed military training zone. Some of the Palestinian families resisted displacement, living in caves and continually trying to rebuild.
No Other Land was lauded by critics, but it has come under fire. The Israeli culture and sports minister called for a boycott of the film, and a pro-Palestinian activist organization criticized it for “normalizing” the Israeli occupation.
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The film still has no U.S. distributor, leaving the filmmakers to make one-on-one deals with cinemas. Art house theaters such as O Cinema have been screening the film independently.
“A one-sided propaganda attack”
On March 5, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner sent a strongly worded letter to O Cinema asking that it cancel planned screenings of the No Other Land.
The city mayor highlighted that Miami Beach boasts one of the largest populations of Jewish residents in the United States. In a letter published in The Miami Herald and confirmed by O Cinema, the mayor criticized the film “No Other Land” as a biased propaganda piece against the Jewish people. The mayor expressed disappointment in the decision to screen the film at a city-owned movie theater operated by O Cinema, given the city’s strong support for Israel in its defense against terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.
The mayor is now suggesting that Miami Beach terminate its lease with O Cinema and withhold the remaining grant money of nearly $80,000. The city commission is set to vote on this resolution in the coming week. Despite the mayor’s pressure, O Cinema has continued to show “No Other Land” at its theater, with sold-out screenings and no protests reported.
O Cinema’s CEO, Vivian Marthell, initially agreed to stop screening the film at the mayor’s request but later decided to continue showing it. She emphasized the importance of free speech and the mission of O Cinema to showcase important stories, regardless of political implications. Marthell’s statement to NPR reaffirmed the cinema’s commitment to providing a platform for diverse voices to be heard.
The potential loss of Miami Beach’s only art house cinema, which hosts events like the Miami Jewish Film Festival, is concerning to filmmaker Kareem Tabsch. Tabsch, known for his documentary “The Last Resort,” expressed alarm at the situation, highlighting the threat to free expression and the democratic values of the community. He emphasized the importance of allowing individuals to make their own choices in a free and open society. The answer could not be processed as it seems incomplete. Please provide more context so I can assist you better.
