The Miami Beach commission has deferred deciding the fate of O Cinema on South Beach after it angered the city’s mayor with screenings of the controversial, award-winning documentary No Other Land.
During their meeting on Wednesday, Mayor Steven Meiner withdrew his resolution that would have terminated the theater’s lease with the city. The commission then tabled second resolution concerning the matter to a later date.
The documentary, made by a Palestinian-Israeli team, shows a group of Palestinian villages’ interaction with the Israeli military in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.
It has received international acclaim and was recently awarded the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Every screening at O Cinema, at its theater in the Old Miami Beach City Hall, has been sold out.
First Amendment rights at issue
Meiner has called the movie antisemitic and a “…one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people…”
“The ability to document history and share diverse perspectives is a fundamental First Amendment right—one that cannot be erased or suppressed simply because those in power disapprove of a particular message,” O Cinema said in a statement.
Meiner originally put a resolution on Wednesday’s agenda that would have directed the city manager to terminate the movie theater’s lease with the city and immediately discontinue any grant funding.
After receiving backlash from civil rights groups, community leaders and artists about his alleged intrusion on First Amendment guarantees, Meiner put the second resolution on the agenda that would encourage “Living Arts Trust, Inc. d/b/a O Cinema to strive to showcase films that highlight a fair and balanced viewpoint of the current war between the state of Israel and the groups Hamas and Hezbollah to ensure that the viewpoint of Jewish people and the state of Israel is fully and accurately presented.”
O Cinema said the second resolution was still an attack on their freedom of speech rights and unacceptable.
“Mayor Meiner’s brazen statements that we are in a “propaganda war,” combined with his new proposed resolution, make it even more clear that he is taking this retaliatory action because he disagrees with a particular viewpoint. That is patently unconstitutional,” an attorney for O Cinema said in a statement.
