Miami Beach Mayor Pulls Motion to Defund Cinema Screening No Other Land

In a city commission meeting this morning, March 19, following a heated public comment session, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner withdrew his controversial proposal to defund and evict an independent nonprofit movie theater that refused to cancel screenings of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land (2024). 

Dozens of Miami Beach residents, including artists, filmmakers, cultural workers, art critics, and movie lovers, advocated in support of O Cinema and its First Amendment right to show the 90-minute film about the Israeli military’s demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank. The documentary was co-directed by two Israeli and two Palestinian filmmakers.

Among those who spoke against the mayor’s resolution at today’s public hearing was previous Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman, who cited former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s failed attempt to evict the museum from its city-owned property for hosting the provocative exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection in 1999.

“ Public funding for the arts does not allow the government to play the role of censor,” Lehman said at the meeting. “Although the government is not required to subsidize arts programs, once it does so, it cannot rescind funding or threaten eviction because it disagrees with a viewpoint expressed in a particular work of art.”

City commissioners also heard from Miami Beach locals donning keffiyehs and shirts inscribed with the phrases “Not In Our Name” and “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Dozens of police cars could be seen surrounding the Miami Beach Convention Center where the hearing took place.

After announcing that the measure would be withdrawn, Mayor Meiner also deferred another resolution, introduced at the beginning of the meeting, that would require O Cinema to show the “ current Israel perspective” alongside No Other Land. This second resolution similarly received significant pushback from Miami Beach community members. 

“ What’s next? Art Basel?” local resident Alan Levine said during the hearing. “It’s in a city-owned building. Are you going to demand that they present exhibits that are ‘fair and balanced’? You hold yourself out as an art welcoming city. These resolutions make a mockery of that welcome.”

For the past two weeks, the Florida mayor has drawn international criticism for repeatedly attempting to intimidate O Cinema into calling off its programming of the film, which he claimed is “a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people” in a March 5 letter to the theater’s CEO Vivian Marthell. That same week, Meiner submitted a resolution to terminate the cinema’s lease on city-owned property and to pull $80,000 of public grant funding.

After initially conceding to the mayor’s demands, O Cinema reversed course by proceeding with the sold-out screenings, scheduled for tonight and tomorrow, and adding more showings.

No Other Land has been the target of repeated censorship attempts since its 2024 premiere. Despite receiving international acclaim and dozens of awards, it is still without an American distributor. Yesterday, the National Coalition Against Censorship condemned Meiner’s attacks on the theater in a public statement. “When the government uses its power to suppress ideas it disagrees with, we all have a duty to object — even when, and perhaps especially when, we do not agree with those ideas,” the statement reads.