TORONTO - In May 1933, German students riled up by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched a book-burning campaign targeting Jewish authors and anyone whose work embodied "the un-German spirit."
In September 2009, a group of artists and intellectuals who should know better have just launched a campaign targeting Israeli filmmakers whose work is in the Toronto International Film Festival.
Even with wholly different intentions, what is the difference? Art should encourage debate -- including on the complex Israeli-Palestinian question that so vexes the protesters -- and not repress it through bully tactics and censorship.
I am not calling the protesters fascists, Nazis or even anti-Semites. I am calling them ignorant and ill-informed. They are playing politics with cinema. They are attacking a festival that, on-screen, embodies the very essence of free speech and open debate.
The list of offenders, who reportedly signed an open letter of protest, includes luminaries such as Jane Fonda, David Byrne, Danny Glover, Naomi Klein, Wallace Shawn, Ken Loach and Canadian filmmaker John Greyson, who brashly withdrew his own film, Covered, from the festival's Short Cuts Canada program as an act of defiance.
Their protest, which has escalated into a bitter campaign against all Israeli films screening in the 2009 filmfest, is the contemporary equivalent to a book-burning. The core issue is the festival's City to City program. This is a new venture this year launched by festival co-director Cameron Bailey. It is designed, according to Bailey and co-programmer Kate Lawrie Van de Ven, "to spotlight global cities each year at the festival."
This first program of 10 films puts the spotlight on Tel Aviv. The protesters claim that, because the program does not contain Palestinian films, it is unbalanced and has become part of "the Israeli propaganda machine."
Bailey posted a letter on the TIFF website defending the independence of the festival. I believe him when he says that City to City was programmed without pressure "from any outside source." That obviously includes the Israeli government.
Bailey rightly says: "We recognize that Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and that the city remains contested ground ... As a festival that values debate and the exchange of culture, we will continue to screen the best films we can find from around the world. This is our contribution to expanding our audiences' experience of this art form, and the worlds it represents."
That would be bafflegab if the Toronto festival did not deliver. But the evidence speaks for itself.
Last year, the fest programmed both Waltz with Bashir, an Israeli film critical of Israel's military record, and the France-Lebanon film I Want to See, which chronicles the tragic aftermath of the 2006 war in Lebanon.
In 2005, the fest showed two Palestinian features. One was Hany Abu-Assad's controversial Paradise Now, a sympathetic portrait of an Arab suicide bomber. The festival refused to drop the film, despite pressure from Israeli sources.
This year, Bailey chose Palestinian-born Elia Sulieman's haunting autobiographical film The Time That Remains, for the Contemporary World Cinema program. It shows what happened to his own family when Israel took over his homeland. Clearly, Toronto does not play political favourites.
This is not just about Israel vs. Palestine. Other world hotspots have been in the spotlight. In the past, Toronto has screened films sympathetic to Tibet and critical of China. The festival has also shown films which are officially sanctioned by the Chinese government. And others by Chinese directors whose work was banned in China.
A film festival that is supposed to embrace the world should not take sides on complex social and political issues. It should be programming films that illuminate all sides of every issue possible. Toronto does just that. So the protest is chilling.
Artists should never promote the censorship of art.
