The usual list of celebrity idiots are protesting the Toronto film festival for highlighting Israeli films and culture:
The group is circulating a letter of protest and has drawn more than 50 signatures from artists around the world including American writer Alice Walker, Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein, U.K. filmmaker Ken Loach and American actor Danny Glover.
“Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto,” the letter states.
Same bullshit, different day. But what’s almost more shocking is the response of the festival organizers:
Festival co-director Cameron Bailey responded with a statement defending the program, although he acknowledged “Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and that the city remains contested ground.”
Excuse me? Tel Aviv is “contested ground”???
There are no words.
I can’t blame them – TIFF is a barbarous file format that should have been binned years ago.