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By Felix Osike
POLICE on Friday blocked the screening of a film on the trial of prominent members of the leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany after the World War II.
According to Sandra Schulberg of Schulberg Productions, New York, the African premiere of the newly-restored 1948 feature-length documentary film, Nuremberg: Its lesson for today,” was stopped at 7:45pm, a few moments before the film was to start showing at Watoto Church in downtown Kampala.
CID officials carried away both DVD copies of the film that had been provided, as well as DVDs of the other films in the Cinema for Peace series that were to be screened at Watoto Church next week. Police also removed several of the leaflets posted on church bulletin boards announcing Nuremberg’s screening.
Police Deputy Spokesman for Kampala Metropolitan, Henry Kalulu, confirmed CID officials stopped the screening. “We had got information from some people which required verification. Our operatives from the CID went there for verification. But it was finally sorted out,” Kalulu said.
Twenty-four major political and military leaders of Nazi Germany, indicted for aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, were brought to trial on November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946 before the International Military Tribunal set up by the main victorious allied forces of the World War II.
More than 100 additional defendants, representing many sectors of German society, were tried before the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals in a series of 12 trials known as “Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings”.
Although widely shown in cinemas in Germany after it was completed in 1948, the US government decided not to release it in US theatres or anywhere else in the world for various political reasons.
The Watoto Church screening would have been the first public showing in Africa.
The film has not been shown publicly yet in the United States. It will be shown for the first time to the American public on September 26 at the New York Film Festival and open in a regular cinema on September 29.
“I had just completed my introduction, and was about to sit down when I was informed that there was a problem. I assumed it was a problem with the projection equipment, so I rose again with microphone in hand to give the audience some more background information on the film while we waited,” explained Schulberg.
Schulberg is one of the delegates attending the International Criminal Court conference at Speke Resort Munyonyo and wants to show the film in the context of the ICC meeting in Kampala over crimes of aggression and other war crimes.
She further explained, “It was while standing at the front of the auditorium that one of the event organisers from the Cinema for Peace Foundation came to inform me that in the delay was not being caused by a projection problem, but rather by Ugandan government officials.”
She said she left auditorium in hope of meeting with the officials. “In the lobby, the Watoto Church media manager Barigayomwe Paul Roy pointed out the man who was head of the unit, and I was told he was with CID (Criminal Investigations Department).
I introduced myself and asked him if it was really necessary to halt the screening and, if so, why. He said I would receive a letter of explanation, but refused to give me is name or his card,” she stated. Roy yesterday said, “We cancelled the show and apologised to the audience.”
He said Uganda’s Deputy Ambassador to Belgium, Mirjam Blaak, protested to the Police. The film was written and produced by Pare Lorentz and Stuart Schulberg for the US based on a script by Stuart Schulberg that was approved by the Chief US Prosecutor of the trial, Robert H. Jackson, who was a Justice of the US Supreme Court at the time.
The film was first screened on June 2 at Speke Resort Munyonyo to ICC delegates. It was due to be screened June 6 at the Commonwealth Banquet Hall Munyonyo and June 9 and 11 at Speke Resort Munyonyo.
Published on: Saturday, 5th June, 2010
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