Over 40 film-makers and artist want cinemas to drop screenings of Israeli films due to Israeli governmental policy in the West Bank.
British film-makers demanded in a letter published by The Guardian Monday that cinema chains across the United Kingdom drop screenings for an Israeli film festival scheduled to open this week.
Seret 2015, the London-Israeli film and television festival, is due to open with a gala screening at the Bafta cinema on Thursday. Screenings are also slated at cinemas including Curzon Soho and Odeon Swiss Cottage in London, according to The Guardian.
Over forty artist and film-makers conveyed their disappointment in a letter sent to The Guardian, stating, “By hosting (the festival), these cinemas are ignoring the 2004 call by Palestinian civil society for sanctions against Israel until Israel abides by international law and ends its illegal displacement of Palestinians, discrimination against them, and occupation of their land.”
The letter goes on to say that because the films are funded by the Israeli government via its London embassy, the cinemas are tacitly complacent in Israeli government policy.
“By benefiting from money from the Israeli state, the cinemas become silent accomplices to the violence inflicted on the Palestinian people, the letter states, adding, "Such collaboration and co-operation is unacceptable. It normalizes, even if unintentionally, the Israeli government’s violent, systematic and illegal oppression of the Palestinians.”
The letter iterates that its intention is not to drown out the voices of individual filmmakers but "to reject the involvement and financial support of the Israeli state.”