Melbourne Queer Film Festival rejects calls to drop Israeli film

Israeli film director congratulates MQFF for resisting campaign by pro-Palestinian protesters who urged cancellation of The Swimmer and called for a BDS ban

THE DIRECTOR OF ISRAELI film The Swimmer has congratulated the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) for standing by its decision to screen the film in the face of a campaign by pro-Palestinian activists to have it removed from the festival program.

Festival organisers are preparing for a second protest tonight when the film is screened at the Jam Factory. Some 40 people gathered on Friday in a protest before the first screening of the film, according to a spokesperson for MQFF, after festival organisers rejected their earlier calls not to screen it.

"I congratulate the festival management for standing up under pressure and allowing my film to be part of the festival,” Adam Kalderon, director of The Swimmer, told The Jewish Independent. “The entanglement of culture and politics clashes with the idea of a gay festival. The Swimmer is dedicated to a silent, disempowered and hidden populace - gay athletes."

"The gay community is still hunted in several communities in the world and has not attained the status of equal rights. Dismissing or vetoing films of personal stories is an aggressive use of power and totally against the concept of equality.”

A spokesperson for MQFF, David Micallef, told The Jewish Independent that Friday night’s screening was disrupted on three separate occasions by protesters inside the theatre, who were allowed to explain the reason for their actions to the audience of 190 people before being ushered away by police without further incident.

The protests followed a series of complaints by pro-Palestinian activists in the week before the opening of the festival on Friday about the inclusion of an Israeli film because the festival programmers did not also include a Palestinian feature film, and that the inclusion of The Swimmer constituted “pinkwashing” ((diverting attention from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).