The mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, is trying to terminate the lease of a movie theater for screening No Other Land, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Miami Herald reported that Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution to terminate the lease of O Cinema, an independent film theater that rents space from the city, and discontinue more than $60,000 in promised grant funding. The legislation comes after Meiner tried to pressure the theater to cancel the screening.
Florida civil rights groups and First Amendment experts say such government retaliation against the theater for the content of the films it chooses to screen would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
“Simply put, the First Amendment does not allow the government to discriminate based on viewpoint or to retaliate against anyone for their speech,” says Daniel Tilley, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. “Pulling funding from an independent, community-based cinema under these circumstances is patently unconstitutional. The government does not get to pick and choose which viewpoints the public is allowed to hear, however controversial some might find them.”
The Miami Beach mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, in a newsletter to Miami Beach residents earlier this week, Meiner wrote: “I am a staunch believer in free speech. But normalizing hate and then disseminating antisemitism in a facility owned by the taxpayers of Miami Beach, after O Cinema conceded the ‘concerns of antisemitic rhetoric,’ is unjust to the values of our city and residents and should not be tolerated.”
On March 5, Meiner sent O Cinema a letter on official city letterhead expressing outrage at the cinema’s decision to screen the film, which documents the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
“Here in Miami Beach, our City has adopted a strong policy of support for the State of Israel in its struggle to defend itself and its residents against attacks by the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah,” the letter read. “Airing performances of the one-sided, inaccurate film ‘No Other Land’ at a movie theater facility owned by the City and operated by O Cinema is disappointing.”
This is flagrant government jawboning—an attempt to use the mayor’s bully pulpit and the implicit threat of government action to cow the theater into self-censorship.
O Cinema initially complied.
“Due to the concerns of antisemitic rhetoric, we have decided to withdraw the film from our programming,” Vivian Marthell, CEO of O Cinema, wrote to Meiner the following day. “This film has exposed a rift which makes us unable to do the thing we’ve always sought out to do which is to foster thoughtful conversations about cinematic works.”
However, the theater then reversed course and told the Miami Herald it would continue the screenings after all.
Hellbound and Down 