UPDATE 03/20/2025: Following a City Commission meeting which revealed that the Mayor’s proposal to evict O Cinema and rescind its municipal funding did not have adequate votes to pass, the Mayor rescinded the measure. The decision came after an outpouring of support for the independent theater, and its right to program its offerings without government interference.
Today the National Coalition Against Censorship condemned the threats by Miami Beach officials to terminate the lease of O Cinema, a local independent theater, and rescind more than $40,000 in grant funding in retaliation for the theater’s screening of the Academy Award-winning film No Other Land. The Mayor has made clear his personal distaste for the film’s depiction of life in the West Bank in Palestine, decrying it as “a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people,” and has suggested that because the city owns the theater’s building, that the theater’s programming should align with his political beliefs.
City officials’ use of the city budget, and its contracts, to pressure cultural institutions to censor expression they personally dislike violates the very core of the First Amendment. While government officials may decide to revoke arts funding for a vast number of reasons, doing so as a means to suppress specific viewpoints is an assault on freedom of expression.
Read NCAC’s Full Statement here:Click here for a full-screen view: