Producers Sue : USIA Called Censor of Film Exports

In July, 1982, film distributor John Hoskyns-Abrahall made plans to ship overseas prints of “In Our Own Backyards: Uranium Mining in the United States,” a documentary exploring the health and environmental impact of uranium mining on a Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico.

As he has often done in the nine years since opening tiny Bullfrog Films in Oley, Pa., Hoskyns-Abrahall sent a copy of the movie to the United States Information Agency in Washington along with an application for a “certificate of educational character.”

But he did not know much about the USIA’s certificates--a kind of government seal of approval that signals foreign countries that they should waive import duties and taxes on a film. He considered certification a routine affair.

‘Anti-Nuclear Message’

The agency certified 5,474 films in 1982, but “In Our Own Backyards” was not one of them. To Hoskyns-Abrahall’s surprise, the USIA refused to certify the film, stating in a letter to Bullfrog Films that it carried an “anti-nuclear message,” that it “implied that the U.S. government is too concerned with pleasing industrial leaders to protect the public interest” and that it suggested that “American society is once again taking advantage of the native American Indian.”

Hoskyns-Abrahall was nonplussed, saying later in an interview: “All of our films deal with exactly the same things--environmental, disarmament and peace issues.”

When a second Bullfrog film was rejected the next year for similar reasons, he grew suspicious. “This never happened until the Reagan Administration,” he said.

Did the USIA censor the Bullfrog films?

Unprecedented Lawsuit

That is what Hoskyns-Abrahall and nine other film makers charge in an unprecedented lawsuit filed against the agency last December in a Los Angeles federal court. They claim that the USIA, for political reasons, denied certification to six documentary films distributed by four different companies.

Among the rejected films is one that, the agency says, leaves the impression “that the U.S. has been the aggressor” in the Nicaraguan war and another that offers a picture of drug use and pregnancy among American teen-agers that could be “misunderstood by foreign audiences.”

At the same time, however, the USIA has approved a film that soft-pedals the role of industrial polluters in the formation of acid rain, detailing instead the natural causes of the phenomenon. Another film that received approval argues that women should “submit” to the wills of their husbands.

The USIA, the film makers say in their suit, “has chilled and continues to chill” their right to make and distribute films that “present a point of view that is considered unfavorable to the United States.” The case, which was not argued before a jury, is currently under submission by U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima.

The film makers have asked the court to order the USIA to certify their films and to declare the federal regulations governing film certification unconstitutional.

The lawsuit has focused attention on the little-known film-reviewing function of the USIA, a $855.7-million-a-year federal agency whose director, Charles Z. Wick, receives policy guidance from Secretary of State George P. Shultz and is a longtime friend of President Reagan.

The agency, which was created to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries,” runs the huge Voice of America and Worldnet international broadcasting operations, as well as American libraries and reading rooms throughout the world.

Since 1953, the USIA has also administered the so-called Beirut Agreement, a 1949 multilateral treaty intended to “promote the free flow” of educational, scientific and cultural films. Signed originally by 29 nations--including Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya--the treaty is honored formally or informally by about 60 nations that have agreed to waive taxes and import fees on films that “instruct or inform” and “maintain, increase or diffuse knowledge and augment international understanding and good will.”

Certification Requirements

The treaty stipulates that certified films must be “representative, authentic and accurate,” but a 20-year-old federal regulation that outlines the USIA’s approval process says films may not be certified if they “attempt generally to influence opinion, conviction or policy (religious, economic or political propaganda), to espouse a cause, or conversely, when they seem to attack a particular persuasion.”

That, say the 10 film makers, runs contrary to the original intent of the Beirut Agreement and the Constitution.

The suit, filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a public-interest law firm in New York, has drawn the attention of diverse organizations. In a “friend of the court” brief filed in August, the American Civil Liberties Union--acting on behalf of five arts and film organizations--accused the USIA of using the certification process to promote the views of the Reagan Administration while “stifling the voices of dissent.”

The legal action has been supported by U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), who has introduced legislation to change the manner in which the USIA reviews films.

Berman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the USIA’s procedure “an alarming violation of our freedom” and said denying certification to films “undercuts the overseas export policy of this country.”

Agency officials deny that political considerations had anything to do with rejecting certification for the disputed films. Marvin L. Stone, deputy director of the USIA and a former editor of U.S. News & World Report magazine, called the charges “unfounded” and “disturbing.”

‘Just a Tax Case’

USIA general counsel and chief of staff Joseph Morris termed the lawsuit “just a tax case.” He added, “I absolutely reject the contention that we censor films.”

Ironically, both sides agree on one thing: that the lawsuit has raised questions about whether the government should be in the business of reviewing films at all.

“It’s contrary to our whole philosophy of government to have bureaucratic officials evaluating and making judgments about motion pictures,” said George Stevens, co-chairman of the board of the American Film Institute, who once ran the USIA’s film-making division.

Said the USIA’s Morris: “We would like to see audio-visual materials moving back and forth with the greatest possible freedom; that goes to the guts of our First Amendment ideals that the system was founded on. But if we started to certify (everything), then the value of our certificates would disappear.”

During the first five years of the Reagan Administration, the USIA certified 30,589 films and rejected only 80, less than 1%. During the Administration of President Jimmy Carter, 12,167 films were certified and 126 rejected.

Not all films are denied certification for politically charged reasons. Films seeking only to entertain (i.e. most Hollywood movies) and ones promoting a specific product or company do not qualify either.

Also, the USIA stresses that lack of certification in no way prevents films from leaving the country. However, for Bullfrog and other companies involved in distributing documentaries, USIA approval often determines whether a film is shipped abroad.

Profit and Loss Balance

Overseas taxes, the film makers say, often tip the delicate balance between profit and loss on their motion pictures. (Foreign taxes can range from just a few dollars to several hundred dollars on each print of a film. Foreign distributors pass on the cost to community groups, libraries or schools that most often rent or purchase documentary films.)

Susanna Styron and Pamela Jones, producers of “In Our Own Backyards,” were incensed when they first learned of the certification denial.

“When we heard we’d been rejected, we thought, ‘Wait a minute, this can’t be constitutional,’ ” Styron (the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron) recalled. “We weren’t going to ignore it.”

The documentary explores the health effects of uranium on miners, the environmental effects of dumping radioactive ore in open areas and features interviews with government officials, uranium miners and their employers. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited the documentary as “an excellent summary of the problems” posed by mining the essential raw material of the Nuclear Age.

Jones said she telephoned the USIA and was told “that they considered the documentary biased and felt that we had ‘tampered’ with one of our interviews (in which a Nuclear Regulatory Commission member discusses various environmental and health problems).”

For Jones, a former consumer reports reporter-producer for Time Inc., “Not only was it a challenge to my journalistic integrity, but it demonstrated that they had no legitimate reason for turning us down.”

Upset Over Evaluation

The film makers also were shocked to learn that “In Our Own Backyards” had been evaluated by the Department of Energy, whose alleged poor oversight of uranium mining was a theme of the film.

“That’s like inviting the fox into the chicken coop,” Hoskyns-Abrahall said. “They were the wrong people to consult.”

During the appeal process, the USIA said, it had turned to “private sector researchers with no ax to grind and no special interest” for their opinions.

One of those researchers was Dr. Geno Saccomanno, a Grand Junction, Colo., specialist in industrial contamination. His research, he acknowledged, is financed in part by the Department of Energy.

In an interview, Saccomanno described the film as “one of those smut attempts against the industry. . . . It seems to think the industry is liable and should be made to correct their deficiencies. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by saying bad things about a company.”

Ultimately, the USIA said, “In Our Own Backyards” could not be certified because it attempted to “espouse a cause and influence opinion, conviction or policy.”

Point of View Acknowledged

Styron said, “Obviously we had a point of view; everybody has a point of view. We really made a very responsible effort not to be strident--that wouldn’t have done any good. But even if we had made a totally one-sided film, in my opinion--as American citizens--we should have been able to distribute it as freely as other films.”

While Jones went to law school (a decision spurred by the USIA action, she said), Styron decided to investigate the USIA’s certification process further to see if the agency’s decision on her film was a fluke or a pattern.

Among the people Styron contacted was Charles Light, president of Green Mountain Post Films, a distribution company that opened in 1975 in Turner’s Falls, Mass. Light is also one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

In the late days of the Carter Administration, Light applied for a certificate for “Save the Planet,” a film history of the Atomic Age. Just before the change in administrations, the USIA rejected the film and, after the Reagan Administration took over, rejected it again on appeal.

The USIA’s formal rejection said that Light’s documentary “resurrected traditional U.S. guilt of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” and that it cast the “government, through its officials, in a negative manner.”

Portrayed as ‘Almost Maniacal’

The agency said “Save the Planet” showed American presidents and officials “giving speeches which appear to be simple-minded, lacking in understanding of the problem and, in some cases, almost maniacal.”

Light said that as soon as the Reagan Administration took office in 1981 “there was a storm at the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) over the funding of a film about Nicaragua and PBS was being told what kind of programs to broadcast. There appeared to be all sorts of politically tainted cutbacks. What happened to my films seemed to be just part of the general policy.”

After meeting with Styron, Light submitted three more films: “Secret Agent,” “Ecocide: A Strategy of War” and “The Last Resort,” documentaries ranging in topic from U.S. use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam to civil disobedience.

None of the films at first received certificates, but the agency later reversed itself on “Secret Agent” and “The Last Resort.”

“The reasons why they overturned the decision on ‘Secret Agent’ in particular were . . . silly,” Light said. “They said it was approved because it showed the American system at its best. Is that the political criteria? Do we have to make films which only show America at its best to get certified?”

No, said the USIA’s Marvin Stone. The agency does not approve only films that project a positive image of the United States, he said. It also certifies films that “show the plurality of American life and the diversity of views possible” in this country.

Four Films Rejected

George McQuilkin, president of Churchill Films in Los Angeles, said that his firm had four films rejected in 25 years. The USIA rejected two films during the Nixon and Ford administrations and two during the Reagan years.

One of those, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting-financed look at female Army recruits was later certified after an appeal, but another, “Whatever Happened to Childhood?,” is one of the films named in the lawsuit.

“ ‘Childhood’ won more awards than any other film we’ve released in the past 10 years,” McQuilkin said. “It was based on research from two or three popular books. I think the USIA didn’t like the image it presented; they were uncomfortable with it.”

The Emmy-winning film, which was televised nationally in the United States, features interviews with adults and teen-agers on how the pressures of drug use and changing sexual mores are forcing children into becoming adults at increasingly younger ages.

The USIA rejected the statistics-laden film because, the agency said, it “distorts the real picture” of American youth and could be “misunderstood by foreign audiences.”

While denying certification to the six films (and others, though they were not included in the lawsuit), the agency did issue certificates to other films on politically charged issues.

Film on Uses of Radiation

One USIA-approved film was “Radiation . . . Naturally,” which discusses radiation as a natural phenomenon and lists its beneficial uses (medical, nuclear energy) with less emphasis on the hazards of overexposure.

Produced by the Atomic Industrial Forum, “Radiation . . . Naturally” also has a point of view, said Diane Carruthers, head of the forum’s audio-visual department.

“Our films are more pro-nuclear than anti-nuclear,” she acknowledged. “We attempt to do our films as factually as possible--I mean, we don’t try to make propaganda.”

Another film certified was “To Catch a Cloud: A Thoughtful Look at Acid Rain,” the documentary that focused on the “natural” formation of acid rain rather than on industrial polluters.

The film was produced by the Alliance for Balanced Environmental Solutions, a coalition of various energy companies--targeted by environmental groups as acid rain producers. One of the group’s stated goals is to lobby against legislation aimed at requiring utilities to install expensive pollution control equipment in their power plants.

(Two Canadian documentaries on industrial pollution as a cause of acid rain were sent to the United States three years ago and were classified by film reviewers in the Justice Department as “political propaganda.” To be shown in this country, the films had to carry a disclaimer disavowing U.S. agreement with the subject matter.)

God’s Plan for Wives

“The Family: God’s Pattern for Living” was a series of six films produced by the Moody Institute of Science, a conservative religious organization, that were certified and sent overseas. One segment, as explained in promotional materials, examines God’s plan for wives and the “need” for them to “submit” to their husbands. A blurb for another segment begins “God’s standard is that Christians remain married.”

USIA regulations specifically forbid certification of films carrying a religious message. However, the agency’s Morris explained that such films may be seen only by a religious group’s overseas membership. “Under the law we cannot certify a film that is being used to recruit or proselytize,” he said.

However, within the promotional literature for the film was a listing of “where to use Moody films” that listed, among others, nursing homes, hospitals, factories or stores.

Morris did not return a reporter’s calls regarding the apparent discrepancy.

Last November, Rep. Berman introduced HR 3825, which has become known as the “free trade of ideas” bill. A portion of this bill addresses the current controversy by barring the USIA from rejecting a film “because it advocates a particular position or viewpoint, so long as it presents a sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts.”

Said Berman: “It’s a matter of grave concern to me to think of the chilling effect that this (certification denial) has on the documentary film producer. In effect, the USIA is telling them not to produce something that is inconsistent with the ‘American Way.’ ”