[Fdu] important: Open Letter to the Board of Hot Docs

[Cynthia Wright]

[Dear FDU list, Please see below for this important call already signed -- names below -- by many of the city's most important documentary filmmakers, many of who are also academics. Please consider signing..info is below...one does not have to be a F-T filmmaker. Academics who write on cinema, for example, may want to sign as well as others who want to heed the call below. -- CW] 

Hello Filmmakers, Artists, Academics
Please see the letter below, addressed to the co-chairs of the Board of Hot Docs festival.

To add your name to this open letter, please send an email to endapartheid at riseup.net by midnight EST Tuesday April 26


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NOTE: this is a protest action -- not a call for boycotting either the festival, the films or filmmakers -- we're calling on Hot Docs itself to refuse this collaboration with Co-Pro 13 and the Israeli state.




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To the co-chairs of the board of directors of Hot Docs:
cochairs at hotdocs.ca

  

Dear Mr. McMahon and Mr. Mirsky:



            As members of the film and arts community, we are deeply disappointed to learn that Hot Docs has decided to partner with the Israeli organization “CoPro Documentary Marketing Foundation”.  Intentionally or not, this decision puts Hot Docs in direct collaboration with the Israeli state.  By partnering with CoPro, Hot Docs is participating in “Brand Israel”, a state-funded campaign which deliberately pursues partners by creating venues that shift the focus from six decades of Israel’s deadly violations of international law to Israel’s achievements in medicine, science and culture.



            As artists and filmmakers who actively support the call from Palestinian civil society for a non-violent  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel,  we are disheartened and disturbed to see Hot Docs lending its endorsement to CoPro. In 2009, in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza which left over 1400 Palestinians dead, hundreds of artists from around the world signed the Toronto Declaration to protest TIFF’s complicity in rebranding through the “Spotlight on Tel Aviv” program.  Must we now add Hot Docs to the list of cultural organizations whose complicity with the Israeli state puts them on the wrong side of history?



            Given the general awareness of the cultural boycott of Israel and the rebranding campaign following TIFF in 2009, the current collaboration with Israeli State funded CoPro is particularly objectionable.  It suggests, in fact, a more deliberate demonstration of support for Israel’s propaganda campaign than the 2005 Hot Docs Spotlight on Israel program which was also sponsored, directly in this case, by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  This indicates a trend that makes a mockery of Hot Docs stated policy that it  “cannot endorse or oppose any one political position or cause”  and that “Hot Docs does not support sides – it supports documentary filmmakers”.  Ultimately, this trend of collaboration with the Israeli state puts progressive filmmakers and artists who support Hot Docs in an increasingly compromised position.



            How can Hot Docs live up to its slogan “Outspoken. Outstanding” if it continues to collaborate with an apartheid state?  Will Hot Docs be outspoken about its complicity with the Israeli state when artists around the world start questioning its actions?  Answering the BDS call would be an outstanding decision.  Contrary to popular misconception, this would not require sanctioning or excluding individual Israeli artists from the program.  Rather, respecting the cultural boycott of Israel demands that organizations like Hot Docs refuse partnerships with institutions such as CoPro which are supported by the Israeli state.  It would mean standing in solidarity with Palestinian artists, virtually all of whom have signed the BDS call.  It means saying No! To CoPro.



            As artists committed to the freedom of Palestinians and to the preservation of Hot Docs, we are calling on Hot Docs, and their documentary filmmaker partners, to refuse collaboration with institutions, like CoPro, which are supported by the Israeli state. We are not calling for a boycott of Hot Docs.  We are encouraging Hot Docs to find alternative ways of engaging both Palestinian and Israeli progressive forces, while bypassing the Israeli state, in a principled stand of cultural solidarity.



Endorsed by:




Elle Flanders, filmmaker/artist



Richard Fung, video artist, professor, OCAD University (Hot Docs: various films screened; jury member)



Rebecca Garrett, filmmaker



Amy Gottlieb, video artist



John Greyson, filmaker/video artist, Associate Professor, York University (Hot Docs: Fig Trees, Canadian Premiere, 09; International Jury, 09)



Cathy Gulkin, documentary film editor, DOC member



Ali Kazimi, filmmaker, associate professor, York University (Hot Docs: Narmada; A Valley Rises, Best Political Film, Best Director, Special Mention for Best Film, 95; Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas, Nominee, 98; Continuous Journey, Honourable Mention 04; juror, 96, 99, 04)



Paul Lee, filmmaker/film producer, programmer, Honolulu Palestine Film Festival



Naomi Binder Wall, filmmaker


Tom Waugh, professor, Concordia University



Kathy Wazana, filmmaker



b.h. Yael, filmmaker/video artist, Professor, OCAD University



Dan Yon, filmmaker, anthropologist, associate professor, York University



To add your name to this open letter to the Hot Docs board, please send an
email to endapartheid at riseup.net by midnight EST Tuesday April 26. Please follow this format, following the other signatories: name, occupation(s), (then any Hot Docs affiliations – screenings, juries -- in parentheses). The final letter will be sent to Hot Docs Board of Directors the next day (opening night is Thursday, April 28).
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