El Gran Tabu: Major Update Coming!
Seven years ago I pulled off a coup that no one else had ever been able to do, and that no one else has been able to do since: I was able to get a solidly revisionist film screened at a mainstream film festival.
The film was titled El Gran Tabu. It told the story of revisionists like Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zündel, who had been persecuted and prosecuted for simply writing about history.
The Corto Creativo 07 Film Festival in Baja, a joint U.S./Mexican venture, featured a roster of Academy–Award-, Emmy-, and Grammy-winning performers, and films from all over North America. The festival was attended by officials from the Mexican government, and academics from both sides of the border. Because El Gran Tabu dealt with the free speech issue, something that creates common ground between revisionists and non- (or not–yet-) revisionists, the festival accepted the film.
The film was a huge hit, playing to a sold-out, standing-room-only audience of predominantly young film students and enthusiasts. Most importantly, it was a non-revisionist crowd, and they loved it. The crowd gave the movie a standing ovation, and festival attendees packed the post-screening Q&A I held the next day.
Naturally, there was controversy. The U.S. academic association that co-sponsored the festival protested the inclusion of Gran Tabu, and held a press conference the next day to denounce me and the film. The ADL even put out a special bulletin breathlessly denouncing the screening.
But the fact is, the film was screened at a mainstream festival to an enthusiastic, young, non-revisionist crowd. That had never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since.
Rather than a dry, dense historical polemic, Gran Tabu invites the viewer to get to know the people who have suffered because of the persecution of Holocaust revisionists—people like Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf. It’s the human story that draws the viewers in. Human stories make great drama, and great drama makes great movies.
It’s the human stories that are the opening that can lead to curiosity about revisionism and why supposed “democratic” governments resort to such brutal and repressive measures to suppress discussion of one particular historical topic.
I wrote about the victory in Baja right after it happened (codoh.com/library/document/627/).
Two months ago if you had told me that I would be premiering a film at a major, mainstream film festival I'd have probably said you were losing it. And if you had told me that the film I'd be premiering would be a solidly revisionist movie in which people like Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zündel boldly present revisionist ideas and criticism of the Holocaust lobby, I might even have said you were ready for the funny farm. And if you had told me I'd be hobnobbing with Oscar-nominated actors and international superstars, and that my revisionist film would receive enthusiastic applause and a truly positive audience reaction, I'd have called the funny farm myself.
Yet everything I've described above is exactly what happened on June 7, 8, and 9 at the Corto Creativo 07 film festival in Otay Mesa, an upscale suburb of Tijuana, the metropolis on the Mexico/California border.
It is difficult to express fully the importance of what happened at that festival, both in terms of barriers of the past being broken, and trails for the future being blazed. The Holocaust revisionist movement has taken a lot of serious hits the last few years, with some of our most important spokespeople being imprisoned, and many of us living in countries where we are afraid to speak up for fear of violence or government prosecution.
What happened in Baja those three remarkable days in June is enough to not only help revitalize a fatigued, persecuted revisionist community, but also to take Holocaust revisionism to new heights.
Back in 2007, there were limits to what could be done to capitalize on the success of El Gran Tabu. Germar was in prison. Ernst was in prison. And David Cole, who had overseen the production and editing of the film as a personal favor to me, was living sub rosa under a pseudonym.
Now all that has changed. All three men are “out,” Rudolf and Zündel literally, and Cole in the figurative sense. It’s time to capitalize on the success we had seven years ago, and those gears are already turning. Expect to see a big announcement in the next SR!
You can view the 34-minute version of the film, the one that knocked the roof off the Corto Creativo Film Festival, on YouTube http://tinyurl.com/owkjysm
or on Vimeo
or simply here on CODOH.com
http://codoh.com/library/document/627/
Since being uploaded to these sites in April of this year, the film has garnered thousands of views, and hundreds of positive comments. That’s nothing to what is possible with what is coming.
Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, No. 207, July 2014, pp. 11f.
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