Canadian director pulls film in protest

Canadian filmmaker John Greyson has pulled his short documentary Covered out of this year's inaugural City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv, calling it "complicity with the Israeli propaganda machine." This isn't the first time Greyson has protested against Israel: In April, he withdrew his film, Fig Trees, about an AIDS activist, from the Tel Aviv International Film Festival. TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey responded to Greyson with an open letter, in which he rejects the filmmaker's suggestion that the Israeli government played any role in developing the concept or programme for the City-to-City series. “There was no pressure from any outside source,” wrote Bailey. “Contrary to rumors or mistaken media reports, this focus is a product only of TIFF’s programming decisions. We value that independence and would never compromise it.” Covered documents the opposition to the first gay film festival in Bosnia.