Earlier this year, AORTA films was approached by the Berlin Porn Film Festival about having our film “FULL” which they had previously screened included in a program of their creation for TLVfest, the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival. After learning that the festival is under pressure from BDS, we decided to decline to have our film included in the Berlin Porn Film Festival’s program. Our statement, which will be read at the festival, is here:
AORTA films stands in solidarity with the Palestinian-led, nonviolent movement to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) the State of Israel as a means to demand it stops violating Palestinian human rights.
In support of the BDS movement, we declined to include our film Full in the Berlin Porn Film Festival’s program to be shown in Tel Aviv, because TLVFest is sanctioned and supported by entities complicit in an apartheid regime, including Israel’s Ministry of Culture. We recognize and support the festival’s active opposition to the Israeli government’s censorship of bodies. However, our solidarity is with Palestinian people, and with the nonviolent tactics they see fit to meet their three very basic demands: to end the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, to give Palestinians with Israeli citizenship equal rights, and to respect Palestinian refugees right of return to their homeland.
In love and solidarity,
AORTA films
Mahx Capacity, Parts Authority + Ginny Woolf
For more information, see Richard Falk’s article in the Foreign Policy Journal which discusses the March, 2017 UN report, and read artist Ita Segev’s writing on the intersections of BDS and queerness.