Sunday, August 09, 2009

"Courageous" Richard Moore

Love him or hate him as you please, but I was impressed by Richard Moore's handling of both Ken Loach's and the Chinese government's bully-boy tactics. The Age reports that Moore's handling of The 10 Conditions of Love has received world attention.
New Yorker magazine film writer Richard Brody, in a column entitled ''We are all Melburnian'', urged the world's leading film festivals, including Toronto, New York and Venice, to program the film to ''affirm their solidarity with the Melbourne Festival and with its courageous director, Richard Moore, against government pressure''.
I felt proud of Moore's stance and am pleased that he has received international recognition. Hopefully the film at the centre of the dispute will now get even more prominent attention.

2 comments:

Toby said...

It was very heartening to see Richard Moore giving it to the commies and anti_semites. About time, someone did in this crazy world of PC gone mad!

Paul Martin said...

Toby, I don't assume that the pro-Palestinians are anti-semitic (putting aside the technicality that Palestinians are themselves semitic, because 'anti-Semitic' is commonly used as 'anti-Jewish'). My argument is that the targeting of MIFF for receiving funding from Israel to pay for a film-maker to present their film is basically a fascist response, that singles out Israel alone when any other country could have been targetted on similar grounds (but wasn't). Why Israel?

As for Richard Moore and MIFF re: the Chinese, I loved that at each step of the way, Moore basically thumbed his nose to the Chinese. Pull your films? Fine, we'll add another session to our film to partly fill the gap. But wait, we're screening it in our largest cinema. You want to protest some more? Fine, we'll move it to the Melbourne Town Hall. Chutzpah, you've got to love it! If Moore isn't Jewish, he should be made an honorary one.