Krus Abecasis vs Jean-Luc Godard

No portuguese distributor had dared buy the rights to Jean-Luc Godard’s Je Vous Salue, Marie (1985), which was the target of much criticism from religious groups in other countries due to its “blasphemous” content.

When the Portuguese Cinematheque announced that it would show the film during a Godard cycle, conservative groups and individuals protested and threatened to boycott it.

Krus Abecasis, the (right-wing) mayor of Lisbon at the time, was one of those people. He said that if the film was shown, he would “be willing to break everything into pieces”, and that “a few pseudo intellectuals didn’t have the right to offend an entire people”.

The day the movie premiered at the Cinematheque, members of religious organizations were trying to get in at any cost; some of them did get in and tried to stop the projection, with one man putting himself in front of the projector light, swinging his arms. The police had to forcibly remove them.

A group of citizens, mostly filmmakers, said they would sue Krus Abecasis for “publicly inciting criminal activity” and the Cinematheque filed a complaint with the police.

(Via)