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After a week of controversy, the mayor of Miami Beach decided to withdraw his initial proposal to cancel the lease and block a small cinema’s funding due to its screening of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
Residents packed city hall to make public comments, and regardless of their backgrounds and opinions, the majority, including city commissioners, agreed that censorship, eviction and defunding of O Cinema were not the answer or the path forward.
“Whatever opinions everyone has, this is a democracy,” Mayor Steven Meiner said in an opening statement. “You might disagree with me, and that’s OK. That’s the genesis of our country.” Meiner’s initial decision was rejected by a majority of those making public comment. He also said he was deferring an alternative proposal that encouraged the theater to “showcase films that highlight a fair and balanced viewpoint of the current war between the state of Israel and the groups Hamas and Hezbollah”.
“I ask that you just withdraw both of these resolutions, which people find punishing,” Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, one of six elected commissioners, asked him, “and instead just have a dialogue with O Cinema, and don’t force us to vote on something that could be a dialogue.”
Speaking about Miami Beach’s history of antisemitism and racism, another commissioner, Tanya K Bhatt, addressed the public at the meeting, “What we have become as a city is an antidote to returning to that,” she claimed. “I find it horrifying that we are spending hours talking about this issue instead of doing what we were elected to do. What I found the most upsetting is the narrative being painted here, which is that either you are a raging antisemite and a Hamas supporter or that you support censorship. That’s a false binary choice. Let’s take down the tone of the rhetoric.”
After hearing from the other commissioners, Meiner agreed to do this. “I love America and love all of you,” he stated, addressing everyone in the room.
The documentary, which has Palestinian and Israeli directors, follows the story of a community taken over by Israeli forces. It has struggled to find a backer in the US and has instead been self-distributed. It picked up the Oscar for best documentary feature earlier this month.
It was declared by Meiner to be “one-sided”, “inaccurate”, “antisemitic” and a “propaganda attack” on the Jewish people in an official letter sent to the institution’s CEO, Vivian Marthell. Stressing that the city of Miami Beach owns the facility they rent, Meiner asked Marthell to reconsider airing the film.
Refusing to back down, O Cinema’s co-founders decided to continue the film programming against the mayor’s wishes. The film sold out at every screening.
“This is about more than just a film. It’s about the fundamental right of free expression, artistic integrity, and the role of independent cinemas in our community,” Marthell stated on Tuesday at a press conference where cinema leaders stood alongside the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Coalition Against Censorship and film-makers in defense of free expression.
Founded in 2011 and a vital part of the south Florida arts community, O Cinema has championed an eclectic program of films by local and international directors. This threat to free speech and artistic expression has sent a chilling message about what may come next for Miami arts organizations and artists. “Film is a subjective art form. You might love or hate, agree or disagree with a work. It is not our job as an organization to tell you how to feel, but our job is to screen timely, good-quality films that people want to see,” Kareem Tabsch, a Miami-born film-maker who co-founded the cinema, told the Guardian. “It’s a position that I never thought we would be in as an organization and a conversation we would be having to have in 2025, but here we are.”
Global and local backlash against the mayor’s proposal and support for O Cinema’s freedom to program their screenings has poured in through this week. On Monday afternoon, Meiner and city commissioners received an open letter from more than 700 international film-making community members, who called the mayor’s effort “an attack on freedom of expression”. Among the signers were the Miami-born Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, the film-maker and activist Michael Moore and the Oscar-winning actor Marisa Tomei.
“The mayor could have a peaceful protest against O Cinema if he wanted to, or criticize the film’s content on his social media, for example; he has a right to do that,” the Miami film-maker Billy Corben, who directed Cocaine Cowboys, said, “but if we allow him to censor this institution, then what’s next?” Corben has been a longtime member and participant of the O Cinema community. “I’m not going to buy into the mayor’s antisemitism accusations about this film,” he said, “and I won’t play into his identity politics.” “This is not about Israel; this is not about Palestine or Gaza; this is about the censorship battle that O Cinema is fighting, which goes against American and Jewish values. It’s about them still having a home in Miami Beach,” he added.
“We need to be able to sit with uncomfortable stories and the nuances and complications they bring forward, here and globally,” said Nadege Green, the director of community research and storytelling at Miami’s Community Justice Project Inc, during the press conference. “There has to be space for the storytellers. The people who witness these stories should be able to do it without being silenced, even if you disagree.”
O Cinema had been preparing for possible legal action and is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. “If the city of Miami Beach adopts this resolution, they will be breaking the law,” stated Daniel Tilley, the legal director of ACLU Florida, at Tuesday’s press conference. “True freedom means all speech is protected,” he added. “There is an easy path. Commissioners can uphold the constitution and vote the resolution down.”
Attempting to evict a non-profit art institution isn’t the only recent incident in Miami Beach targeting art and artists for showing work labeled “antisemitic” for protesting against the war on Gaza.
In March, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA) quietly removed a portrait of the Palestinian American scholar Edward Said by Charles Gaines.
In May, an artwork by Vũ Hoàng Khánh Nguyên, How we live like water, was exhibited in the window of a Walgreens pharmacy as a public art display by Oolite Arts, Miami’s largest and oldest artist support organization. The work, which featured a subtle artistic interpretation of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, was taken down days later following a decision by Oolite board members after someone called the organization to complain about the work. The removal created a backlash, with 700 local artists and citizens signing an open letter calling for the board chair of Oolite Arts to resign.
In June, the Miami Beach commission adopted a resolution barring the city from contracting with businesses that support boycotting Israel. This anti-BDS statute has restricted artistic freedom, and some participating in exhibits have felt uncomfortable or withdrawn after finding they must sign a vendor registration form affirming they do not participate in any boycott of Israel.
In December, at the door of the internationally recognized art fair Art Basel Miami Beach, pro-Palestinian activists gathered for a second time to protest against the ongoing war in Gaza, demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to Miami-Dade county’s funding of Israel. They unfolded their LET PALESTINE LIVE banner on a public street and encountered a dozen police officers who relocated the group to a corner near the Convention Center, a move many saw as an infraction of activists’ first amendment rights. The policy of relocating protesters followed Meiner’s resolution in March 2024 to impose new protest restrictions. The resolution’s language in draft versions, later removed, intended to show support for Israel while condemning the use of a Palestinian chant.
The Miami-based artist and film-maker Cristina Rivera Sangama, one of the organizers of the 2023 and 2024 pro-Palestine protests at Art Basel Miami Beach, has lost all her income due to speaking out publicly against Israel’s alleged war crimes, she told the Guardian. “I stand unapologetically on the side of humanity and would rather lose all opportunities than watch the country I call home bully me into doing otherwise. This isn’t just about Palestine. Our freedom is inextricably linked.”
