Film festival boycott looms over Israeli sponsorship
LEGENDARY British film director Ken Loach has threatened to withdraw his film Looking for Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival unless organisers withdraw Israel's sponsorship of the event.
ADAM KAMIEN
LEGENDARY British film director Ken Loach has threatened to withdraw his film Looking for Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) unless organisers withdraw Israel’s sponsorship of the event.
In a letter addressed to festival director Richard Moore, a keen supporter of Israeli films, Loach cited Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestinian land, destruction of homes and livelihoods” and “the massacres in Gaza” as his reasons for boycotting the festival, which gets underway on July 24.
The letter was co-signed by the film’s writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien.
Earlier this month, an open letter from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was sent to MIFF organisers urging them not to accept funding from the Israeli government. In the letter, Loach was listed as one of the filmmakers who had expressed support for the boycott.
Earlier this year, Loach successfully lobbied the Edinburgh Film Festival to return a grant from the Israeli embassy, which was intended to help Israeli filmmaker Tali Shalow Ezer get her film shown at the prestigious festival. Loach wrote in his letter to Moore: “This is not a boycott of independent Israeli films or filmmakers, but of the Israeli State.”
Moore rejected Loach’s call for a boycott, saying that Israel had been a sponsor of MIFF for several years, including 2008 when Loach’s film It’s a Free World was shown.
Watch Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric trailer
Speaking exclusively to The AJN, Moore said he was disappointed with Loach’s actions. “I think it is particularly sad that a filmmaker that I respect like Ken Loach would want to take sides on this particular issue and take a stance like this,” Moore said.
A Palm d’Or winner for his 2006 film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Loach pioneered social realism in his seminal films of the late 1960s and early ’70s. He is a vocal socialist and pro-Palestinian activist and his films deal almost exclusively with the struggle of the British working classes.
Keith Lawrence, executive director of the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange, which puts on the annual Israeli Film Festival, said he was pleased with the position Moore had taken.
“It’s an important statement,” Lawrence said of the festival’s strong stance against the boycott.
“[The boycott] is Ken Loach’s position and it’s deeply disappointing that’s the approach he’s taking,” Lawrence said.
News of Loach’s boycott comes after the Chinese Government asked Moore to withdraw a film about the leader of the Muslim minority, the Uighurs, branding her a terrorist and blaming her for instigating deadly riots earlier this month, which killed 180 people.
In a letter responding to Loach, Moore wrote: “I understand that this issue is a particularly emotional one for people, but we will not participate in a boycott against the State of Israel, just as we would not contemplate boycotting films from China or other nations involved in difficult longstanding historical disputes.”
It is unclear whether Looking for Eric will be shown, with tickets already sold for the first screening on July 30.
“The question when you get to this point is: ‘Whose film is it?'” Moore told The AJN. “We’ve given an invitation, they’ve accepted it, they’ve signed a deal with us so how on earth they’re going to pull it … I don’t know.”
Moore said that it was usual for MIFF to show films on political issues with political agendas.
“Filmmakers are a determined bunch of people, who insist on making independent films with strong opinions, so I think it’s part and parcel of being a film festival,” he said.
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