Culture Minister Miki Zohar asked Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich this week to examine the possibility of denying funding to the Tel Aviv Cinematheque based on the films screened at the arthouse theater last weekend as part of the Solidarity Festival.
Zohar wrote in a letter to Smotrich that the annual festival screened films that could be described as “extremist,” including movies that opposed the State of Israel, slandered IDF soldiers and the army, and aimed to strengthen the Palestinian identity of Arab residents of mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel.
Zohar asked Smotrich to examine whether the Tel Aviv Cinematheque violated any grounds of the budget law, which could then allow the denial of its state funding.
The Solidarity Festival has been held at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque since 2011 and the festival has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sports since 2021. The film series focuses on human rights in Israel and the world and aims to promote peace, democracy, equality, and social justice.
The films screened during the latest festival, December 3-10, included films about Romanian, Danish and Kazakh human rights, along with documentaries about conscientious objectors from the IDF, Bedouin life, criminal violence in Arab society, as well as films about the occupation and peace-building among Arabs and Jews.
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Zohar’s letter to Smotrich followed similar requests regarding Israeli films, including Zohar turning to the police to ban the screening of the film “Lyd,” in Jaffa in October, as the film reviews the events that took place in the city of Lod during the 1948 War of Independence.
Another film, “1948, Remember, Remember Not,” retelling the events of the 1948 war through Jewish and Arab voices, with footage from those times, was also recently questioned by the Culture Ministry’s Film Review Council, which warned the Haifa and Jerusalem Cinematheques not to screen the film, although it was shown during the DocAviv Film Festival at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque last year.
The film was then screened by a mixed panel of representatives who ruled that it could only be seen by viewers 16 years of age and older.
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Danny Wilensky, director of the Solidarity Festival, said in response to Zohar’s letter, that films about conscientious objectors, the occupation and the national identity of Arabs in Israel is not a provocation but a reality that affects all Israelis.
Wilensky added that the Cinematheque operates according to the law and is committed to the principles of freedom of expression and artistic creation.
He noted that films screened at festivals don’t require the approval of the Culture Ministry Council, and that the Culture Ministry isn’t authorized to deny support for content, so as to avoid harming the freedom of expression and creation.