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Rhapsody Issue 9 now available.
What do Ken Loach, Jane Fonda and Harry Belafonte have in common?
Plenty, it would seem, given their status in the arts world. But now they also share the ignominy of supporting the censorship of films from Israel.
Loach, an esteemed British film director, pulled his movie Looking For Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) in August after a failed attempt to coerce the organisers into backing down from accepting support from the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.
Fonda and Belafonte were among some 50 identities who signed a petition at the Toronto International Film Festival in September because it had the 'chutzpah' to decide on Tel Aviv as its inaugural partner for a new presentation of films called City to City. Fonda, to her credit, later apologised.
Loach thought he could apply the same bully-boy tactics in Melbourne as he used earlier this year in Edinburgh. What he did not bank on was Richard Moore, the executive director of MIFF, who was also in the throes of an attempt by Chinese officials to force the cancellation of several films.
Moore didn't blink. He flatly rejected the attempts at censorship.
In a withering indictment on Loach, he writes in this edition of Rhapsody (pages 24-25): 'The logical extension of Loach's position is absurd: we can continue to program films from North Korea, from Iran, Russia and China but we must all come out in support of the Palestinians to punish the Israelis.'
What Loach and the other apparent luminaries were attempting to achieve in Melbourne and Toronto was myopic at best and hypocritical at worst.
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Ari Hoenig Quartet
