Film With Anti-Semitic Producer Set to Premiere Friday
A major “documentary” whose executive producer is a radical anti-Semite is set to premiere this Friday in an Illinois cinema complex owned by a firm that was started by a Polish-Jewish immigrant and is still run by his son and grandson.
The film, “The Principle,” has not yet been seen by reviewers, but is billed by its producers as a challenge to the Copernican revelation that the earth is not at the center of the universe, a truth later confirmed by Galileo and now accepted by all major Christian denominations. It has already drawn major controversy, with leading scientists and even its narrator saying they were duped into participating.
The film’s executive producer is Robert Sungenis, a “geocentrist” who co-authored a book entitled Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right. Sungenis is also a “radical traditionalist” Catholic, meaning he rejects that church’s liberalizing reforms of recent decades, who has railed against Jews for much of his adult life.
Sungenis, who started a group called Catholic Apologetics International (CAI) in 1993, is one of the most rabid anti-Semites of the radical traditionalist movement. He has questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, and cited the neo-Nazi canard that there were about as many Jews living in Europe after World War II as before, a plain falsehood. His CAI website has blamed Jews for starting a “New World Order” and referred to the alleged “Jewish origins of bolshevism, Jewish dominance of Hollywood and the media, [and] Jewish control of Congress.”
Sungenis has frequently quoted the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia that “predicts the anti-Christ will come from Jewry.” He has been a columnist for the radical publication The Remnant, where he wrote a piece entitled “The New World Order and the Zionist Connection” that detailed a Satanic conspiracy to rule the earth and claimed, “Among the major forces in the ascent of the New World Order are the Jews, Judaism and Israel.” Although he once produced two series for EWTN, the Catholic TV network, that ended after he published a 33,000-word, anti-Semitic attack on an official Catholic Church statement on converting Jews. That 2002 attack praised vicious anti-Semites including Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest” of the 1930s, as “dedicated Catholic priests who lived impeccable lives.”
The film is to open at the Marcus Addison Cinema in Addison, Ill., a Chicago suburb. The sprawling 21-screen complex is owned by Marcus Theatres, a division of Milwaukee-based Marcus Corp. that owns or manages some 700 screens across the Midwest. The company was started by the late Ben Marcus, described by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as “the tough, legendary Polish-Jewish immigrant entrepreneur … who opened his first movie theater in Ripon [Wis.] in 1935, then built the company a theater and a hotel at a time.” The firm today is publicly held, but Ben’s son, Stephen Marcus, is its chairman, and Stephen’s son, Gregory Marcus, is its president and chief executive officer, according to its website.
Ann Stadler, vice president and chief marketing officer for Marcus Theatres, told Hatewatch today that the company would go ahead with its premiere: “When identifying films to show, we are mindful that the cinema is a place where ideas have been freely exchanged for generations. Our philosophy is to let the marketplace determine the success of each film. However, playing a film does not mean that Marcus Theatres endorses or shares the views and ideas being expressed therein. We understand that there has been controversy in the past surrounding the executive producer of ‘The Principle.’ As a movie company, we provide choices and diversity based primarily on film content, recognizing that every film isn’t for everyone.”
The makers of “The Principle” have not released their film to reviewers, but they have played up its allegedly explosive claims. “Everyone knows that the ancient idea of Earth in the center of the universe is a ridiculous holdover from a superstitious age, right?” the movie’s website says. “Well …. prepare to be shocked!” The site goes on to say that the movie is “destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time” and that it will detail “astonishing new discoveries.”
Actually, the film is already controversial, quite apart from Sungenis’ involvement. After its trailer was released last December, scientists interviewed for it denounced its apparent thesis. Physicist Lawrence Krauss said if he had known its premise he would have refused an interview. Max Tegmark, an MIT cosmologist, told Popular Science magazine scientists were “cleverly tricked” into thinking the movie would be “an ordinary cosmology documentary.” George Ellis, a South African scientist, told the magazine that the filmmakers “did not disclose this agenda, which of course is nonsense.” Even narrator Kate Mulgrew, who once played a Starfleet commander in a Star Trek series and more recently was a star of “Orange is the New Black,” said she totally rejected the film, its premise and Sungenis. “I am not a geocentrist,” she wrote, adding, “I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, “The Principle” is being distributed in North America by Rocky Mountain Pictures, based in Salt Lake City. That is the same company, according to a fawning recent piece about the movie on ChristianCinema.com, that distributed right-wing favorites including Dinesh D’Souza’s “Obama 2016,” Ben Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” Like Sungenis, Gibson is known as a radical traditionalist Catholic.
Officials at Rocky Mountain Pictures did not respond to requests for comment.
The other principal of the film, writer and producer Rick DeLano, is not nearly as well known as Sungenis. But Popular Science, which interviewed him, said he runs a blog, Magisterial Fundies, that talks about the film and geocentrism. It also quoted DeLano saying an unidentified “profoundly impressive power” was working to discredit both him and the film in a “worldwide disinformation campaign.”
The magazine also reported that it had found a Rick DeLano listed as a defendant in a 2002 $10 million suit alleging he and others had conspired “to misrepresent stock in Internet companies” that was settled out of court. When reporter Colin Lecher asked him about the company named in the lawsuit, DeLano went cold. “That would have nothing to do with my film and I think this conversation is over,” he said.
