Makers of Anti-Vax Film Pulled from Tribeca Say They're Being Censored by Robert De Niro
LatestOn Saturday, Tribeca Film Festival co-founder and hapless creator of a media shitstorm Robert De Niro announced that an anti-vaccination film would no longer be shown at the festival. The film’s creators have since issued a statement saying they’re being censored by De Niro and “corporate interests.”
The statement was issued over the weekend by Andrew Wakefield, the ex-doctor and anti-vaccination activist who wrote and directed the film Vaxxed, as well as producer Del Bigtree, who according to IMDB has also worked on the CBS program The Doctors. (Dr. Jim Sears, a pediatrician who appears in Vaxxed, has also been on the show.)
The statement reads, in full:
To our dismay, we learned today about the Tribeca Film Festival’s decision to reverse the official selection of Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.
Robert De Niro’s original defense of the film happened Friday after a one-hour conversation between De Niro and Bill Posey, the congressman who has interacted directly and at length with the CDC Whistleblower (William Thompson) and whose team has scrutinized the documents that prove fraud at the CDC.
It is our understanding that persons from an organization affiliated with the festival have made unspecified allegations against the film – claims that we were given no opportunity to challenge or redress. We were denied due process.
We have just witnessed yet another example of the power of corporate interests censoring free speech, art, and truth.
Tribeca’s action will not succeed in denying the world access to the truth behind the film Vaxxed.
We are grateful to the many thousands of people who have already mobilized including doctors, scientists, educators and the autistic community.
We will be pressing forward and sharing our plans in the very near future.
Onward!
“Due process” is, as Deadline Hollywood points out, a legal term. But no legal action has been filed against the film, and no one is trying to keep it from being shown in general; Tribeca has just decided their festival isn’t the place to do it. Wakefield screened the film on a conspiracy cruise I recently attended for Jezebel, but reporters were not allowed to view it.