Mayor Steven Meiner Seeks Cinema Evection Over Movie

Academy Award Winner Spark Targeted By Miami Beach Mayor

Scenes from No Other Land Still Documentary. Photograph: Antipode Films

Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner is set on evicting an independent cinema from city-owned property after it screened No Other Land, the film about Palestinian displacement in the West Bank that just won the Oscar for best documentary. Perhaps a bit of irony, but he is attempting to evict the cinema for showing a film about Israeli people and IDF forcefully evicting Palestinian people from their own land,

Mayor Meiner’s proposal would terminate O Cinema’s lease and withdraw promised grant funding to the cinema in the amount of $40,000. Meiner then sent a newsletter sent to residents on Tuesday, condemning the film as “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents”.

At one point the mayor had pressured the Cinema not to show the screening. The Cinema’s CEO, Vivian Marthell, allegedly agreed to withdraw the film from programming, citing “concerns of antisemitic rhetoric”, but Meiner said the cinema reversed their decision the next day. The screenings sold out and the cinema added more dates in March.

Marthell told the Miami Herald. “Our decision to screen NO OTHER LAND is not a declaration of political alignment. It…