Things got political on Wednesday at DOC NYC‘s 10th annual Visionaries Tribute Honorees, when honoree Michael Moore asked the crowd to take a pledge “to let our Jewish brothers and sisters know that we will never, ever allow what happened in the 20th century” to happen again.
The Gotham Hall gala marks the opening day of the 14th annual DOC NYC and attracts the who’s who of the doc community from both coasts. Hundreds of documentary filmmakers, cinematographers, producers, editors, publicists, and distributors hobnob with Academy doc branch members in hopes of winning their votes.
Moore, American documentary executive director Erika Dilday, and docu filmmakers Deborah Shaffer and Maite Alberdi, were honored during the four-hour lunch.
“Few of us are in a very festive mood right now,” Moore said during his 40-plus minute acceptance speech. “And so I’d like to start by just asking you to join with me in a moment of silence for the 1,400 who slaughtered on October 7th, and the 10,000, half of them children, who have been slaughtered since, because there is nothing that will help bring back the dead by killing 10,000 more.”
“This has been an awful month, I would assume, if you are Jewish,” Moore continued. “I’ve always felt that I would never want to hear even one single Jewish brother or sister tell me that they feel afraid, that maybe it isn’t what it was promised. Maybe the wrong people have got in charge of things. And yet, I can’t continue living in a world where my Jewish brothers and sisters feel like there are just that many more against them now. And I don’t mean Palestinians against them. I mean the people who have been their true enemy for part of the last two thousand and twenty-three years. And that’s white people and white Christians who have slaughtered (them) over and over again.”
Moore asked the audience, which included Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers Laura Poitras, Roger Ross Williams and Errol Morris, to take a moment of silence and pledge to make sure the holocaust never happens again. “The annihilation, the attempted annihilation, the almost successful annihilation, we have to stand and say, no. We will never let that happen again. We’ve got your back. We’ve got your front.”
Moore took issue with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“You have to separate the politics of the Trumpian, three times indicted Prime Minister of Israel, who was supposed to go on trial this fall for bribery, for fraud. … but can’t stop us from our responsibility to protect the Jews of this world.”
The Oscar-winning director also stood up for the people of Gaza.
“We know how we all would feel if we were trapped in an outdoor prison for 16 years. How crazy would you be right now? What kind of crazy, horrific acts would each of you take if you lived like that with only eight hours of electricity each day? Without food? Without water? And not just since October 7. How would you behave? A war? When one side has nuclear weapons, and the other side figures out how to fly over a wall on a kite? Not a single battleship or a single bomber plane. Not a single jet fighter.”
Moore added, “For those of you who are Jewish, everything I just promised you is a lie. Everything I just told you I would do is a lie, if I refuse to make the same pedge to the Palestinian people, Arabs, the Muslims throughout the world. If I only make it to you or Jewish people and I would not do the same for others then don’t ever believe I’m going to come there and be there for you.”
DOC NYC’s in-person festival concludes on Nov. 16.
