Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner has withdrawn his proposal to terminate O Cinema’s lease over its screening of the Oscar-winning documentary ‘No Other Land’ following a heated City Commission meeting on Wednesday. According to the Miami Herald, a large majority of attendees opposed Meiner’s proposal.
The mayor announced he was withdrawing the proposal and postponing another resolution aimed at encouraging the screening of films that “highlight a fair and balanced viewpoint.” Five city commissioners opposed the resolution to terminate the nonprofit theater’s lease and cut its funding, with only Commissioner David Suarez in support. The Miami Herald reported that the mayors of Miami and Hialeah, Fla., called in to back Meiner, but Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was booed by attendees after exceeding the speaking time limit.
The mayor told The Miami Herald that he introduced the proposal as a public safety measure, stating that he “legitimately viewed this as a public safety threat.”
Advertisement O Cinema was represented by attorney Miriam Haskell of the Community Justice Project, alongside the ACLU of Florida. Haskell told The Miami Herald that Meiner was “right to withdraw the resolution to evict and defund O Cinema.” The theater’s legal representatives argued that the proposal was a clear case of “viewpoint censorship.”
Meiner’s proposal gained international attention, especially within the filmmaking community, which viewed it as a troubling precedent aimed at suppressing free speech.
On Monday, documentarians Michael Moore, Laura Poitras, Ezra Edelman, and Alex Gibney signed an open letter to the city of Miami Beach, condemning the threat as “an attack on freedom of expression, the right of artists to tell their stories, and a violation of the First Amendment.”
No Other Land documents the resistance of Palestinian activists against forced displacement and settler expansion in the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta. The film is directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of activists: Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Basel Adra.
Source: Variety