More than 3,500 film industry workers and visual artists, including Brian Eno, Nan Goldin, and Sky Hopinka, have joined a boycott of Israeli film institutions they allege are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
“As film-makers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognise the power of cinema to shape perceptions,” the boycott pledge reads. It was published yesterday, September 8, by the activist group Film Workers for Palestine (FWP), which has previously organized actions protesting the film industry’s complicity with the Israeli military’s ongoing assault on Palestinians, classified as a genocide by human rights groups and Israeli organizations.
“We answer the call of Palestinian filmmakers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanization, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression,” the pledge continues. A footnote states that examples of complicity include “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them.”
The boycott targets “institutional complicity,” and not individual identity, according to a Frequently Asked Questions page accompanying the pledge. Entities affected by the boycott include cinemas, broadcasters, production companies, and major film events like the Jerusalem Film Festival, Haifa International Film Festival, Docaviv, and TLVfest. Hyperallergic has contacted those entities for comment.
The FWP campaign draws inspiration from Filmmakers United Against Apartheid, a boycott founded in 1987 by directors Jonathan Demme and Martin Scorsese to pressure the United States film industry from distributing work in apartheid South Africa as part of the international anti-Apartheid movement.
Among the signatories are names frequently seen in protests and campaigns for Palestine. Musician and visual artist Brian Eno organized a benefit concert for Palestine to be held next week in London, and photographer and filmmaker Nan Goldin has participated in several pro-Palestine protest actions and been vocally critical of Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza.
British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, who also signed the pledge, told Hyperallergic in a statement that artists “have a responsibility not to remain silent in the face of atrocities.”
“Just as cultural boycotts played a crucial role in challenging apartheid South Africa, we too must refuse to normalize or collaborate with institutions complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide, apartheid, colonization and occupation of the Palestinian people,” Nabulsi said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to escalate the military’s attacks on Gaza as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused Israel this week of committing “war crime upon war crime.” The new FWP campaign follows an increasing number of film industry actions in support of Palestine, including protests at the Toronto International Film Festival this week and at the Venice International Film Festival last month.
“Cinema and the arts are never neutral,” filmmaker Sky Hopinka told Hyperallergic. One of the initial signatories of the pledge, Hopinka also participated in a 2023 boycott of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), during which several cinema workers accused festival organizers of censoring the Palestinian liberation movement.
“As the U.S. continues to finance Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the genocide its people, we as artists and makers must decide whether our work will be used to mask violence or to challenge it,” Hopinka said, emphasizing the power of refusing complicity through institutional partnerships and silence. “[It] is not only the images we create that carry a voice, but also the means by which they are made.”