The 2009 Toronto International Film Festival is facing a barrage of protests over a series of movies scheduled to be screened to spotlight the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, in the festival’s inaugural City to City program.
Canadian filmmaker John Greyson |
“We are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine,” read the letter, which several Israeli filmmakers also signed onto.
“This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.”
Jane Fonda |
“To celebrate Tel Aviv or any Israeli city for that matter is indefensible,” the organization said in its own release, “particularly after this year’s lethal assault on Gaza, while Israel continues building its illegal apartheid wall and settlements and extends its network of checkpoints that suffocate the Palestinian population.”
Harry Belafonte |
“Whether the City to City program is officially connected to the “Brand Israel” campaign or not, it is rebranding to the core: it serves to normalize Israel’s international image, an image tarnished by decades of military brutality and violations of international law.”
The Associated Press reported Thursday that Palestinian artists in Ramallah were also protesting the festival from outside the offices of the Canadian representative in the West Bank.
Danny Glover |
The festival is generally considered the second most important film festival in the world after Cannes.
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