[Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[chris bravo]

just to clarify, I brought up the vaxxed situation because it also seems
like a moment where a big powerful institution (tribeca) was held
accountable for a REALLY bad programming decision (including vaxxed in the
festival). It seems (on the outside) like a moment when tribeca recognized
that it needed to firm up its institutional character and to counter a
reactionary push from powerful autocrats (de niro).

i agree that there seems like way more to this story than we know. However,
yanking a film because (as far as we know) a hypothetical compromise of
MOMA's emails, is super bad programming. we are all in agreeance on that,
right?

institutional character matters.

"presents a different dilemma for MoMA than it does for Facets or Film
Forum"

not really. the right-wing lunatics have largely left culture off their
kill lists for the time being. (probably because they did such a good job
destroying public art in the 80's lol). Don't we want our cultural
institutions to hold themselves accountable and to be courageous? If this
were journalism, and a publication pulled a story because of outside
pressure, we would be going ballistic. With MoMA, I think you can argue, it
matters EVEN MORE because there is no accountability process, no
transparency. We have to TRUST that they acting as they should.

"due diligence"

is taking reasonable steps to protects your servers. (definitely not the
responsibility (or concern) of the film programmer)



On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Dave Tetzlaff <djtet53 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > But, isn't censorship also a serious issue? Haven't we been fighting for
> institutions, especially cultural institutions to commit themselves to
> stand up for and support artists who are being attacked? Remember the dust
> up over the anti-vax movie that tried to screen at Tribeca? The argument
> seems the same: large, powerful, "important" cultural institutions need to
> get their shit together because its scary out there.
>
> WTF? Curators make programming choices. Most work does NOT get picked.
> That's not censorship. Yes, institutions should support artists under
> attack from the prevailing powers that be, but that's not the case here.
> Under the Sun has already been widely screened at festivals, received some
> commercial bookings, and generally been praised. North Korea is angry,
> though, which presents a different dilemma for MoMA than it does for Facets
> or Film Forum, as MoMA is big enough to be a  target for hacking that would
> actually harm the institution. MoMA drops one film from it's festival ––
> their loss since people want to see it -- out of due diligence for the
> museum's security, and the film just screens somewhere else.
>
> If anything, Sally Berger helped promote Under the Sun by activating the
> Streisand Effect. If her choice to drop the film from the Doc Fortnight was
> indeed the reason for her dismissal, as Su freidrich says, that's "insane!"
> Of course, that may just be an excuse for something else – and who knows
> what the real story might be...
>
> Vaxxed? Seriously? Andy Wakefield isn't a film artist. He's a scam artist,
> and public health menace who exploits kids with ASD for profit. Wakefield
> conned Grace Hightower and Robert De Niro, and RDN stuck Vaxxed onto the
> Tribeca schedule going around the programmers, (and against their
> objections, apparently). It was hardly 'censorship' when De Niro took it
> off the schedule since it already had a commercial distributor, and they
> had already lined up the commercial booking at the Angelika. The film
> demeans and stigmatizes neuro-atypical kids, is full of documented
> falsehoods and blatantly mendacious editing, and just plain sucks as
> documentary art. Again, there are only x-many screening slots at any venue,
> and the choice to show something is also a choice NOT to show something
> else. The real censorship in the works at Tribeca was some worthy
> documentary submitted through proper channels getting passed-over so De
> Niro could screen a piece of hack-work propaganda as a 'personal privilege'.
>
> Sheesh.
>
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