The ACLU hosted a panel discussion at the Sundance Film Festival about the current state of free expression and creative freedom in America today.
Moderated by ITVS President and CEO Carrie Lozano, the panel, which included filmmakers, ACLU attorneys, and producers, discussed how increasing pressure from government censorship, corporate surveillance, and self-censorship is impacting the ability to tell difficult stories.
Tandem Pictures’ Julie Christeas, who is in Park City working on Molly Ringwald’s film “Run Amok,” explained how a location she had secured for an upcoming narrative project suddenly became unavailable.
“I’m an independent producer, and like many independent producers, we go into real communities both here and abroad to create our work,” Christeas said. “After making ‘Run Amok’ this year, I was supposed to go to Ohio State to make another movie and shoot at the university. As the filming date approached and we were on the phone to make plans, the university started explaining to me why we were not welcome there. Because the movies they were making had queer protagonists, they were being heavily threatened with having their funding taken away, and they didn’t know if they were going to get a real American history lesson that was fundamental to all of the classes that had to do with slavery and women’s leadership.” ”
Christea said she was shocked.
“My producing partner and I, perhaps naively, said to[university officials]: ‘You now have a chance to stand up against fascism. Just say no, and you can call us here and take our money.’ And this poor guy said, ‘I can’t do it.’ They would lose all their funding, but if they received it, they might be subject to new rules about what they can and cannot teach students. (Mr. Christes did not name the university).
Director Sharon Riese spoke about the challenges she faced while making Seized, a documentary about a small family-owned newspaper in Kansas that was raided by police in an attempt to publicly stop the newspaper from reporting on corruption. Riese said it took more than a year to gain access to topics other than newspaper staff.
“There was a rumor going around town that we had been hired by the newspaper to make a documentary (about the editor-in-chief),” Riese said. “There was a lot of fake news going around. Everyone said they believed in the First Amendment and newspaper reporters were important and should be able to write whatever they wanted, except when it related to (their town). So we really talked to the people in town. So we tried really hard to talk to the mayor, and we had a very long interview with him, and[the town]understood what we wanted to say more about: a panoramic view of what actually happened there. ”
Abby Cook, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Utah, said that while the commission’s filmmakers are “telling great stories through film,” she is “telling strange stories through complaints, lawsuits, and more.”
Cook referenced a recent lawsuit the ACLU is pursuing against Utah’s book ban.
“Utah is a little bit unique, and one of the worst things about it is that they allow individual school districts to remove books from their shelves, and once three districts pull a book from their shelves, it goes on a big list and gets removed from all the shelves,” Cook said. “Utah currently has 22 books on its list, including Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’ and Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou’s ‘I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings.’
Cook explained that the ACLU is representing four author plaintiffs and two student plaintiffs in this lawsuit.
“The young people we work with here are really amazing,” she said. “They did a very good job of saying in the lawsuit that these books reflect my experiences throughout my life in a way that no one else could. In order for me to be the kind of citizen you want me to be, so that I don’t feel alone during the loneliest time of my life in high school, I need access to that kind of information.”
Mr Lozano said that although the government had cut off funding to ITVS, it still existed. She explained how the PBS platform has not backed away from political documents that address current events, despite pressure from government leaders.
“We all saw what happened to Jimmy Kimmel,” Lozano said. “We may have known about 60 Minutes being pulled by CBS and some of the settlements that took place between some networks and the administration pretty early last year. One of the things[TVS]talks about a lot is self-censorship. When I first started feeling the pressure at ITVS, one of the things my lawyer told me was not to self-censor. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.”
