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Taubman Entertainment Group

Location:

Beverly Hills, CA
Type:

Film Production Group
Formation:

1987
CEO:

Lawrence Taubman

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The Taubman Entertainment Group is a Beverly Hills, California-based for-profit film production company owned by far-left activist Lawrence Taubman. 1

Taubman was the executive producer of the 2014 documentary Killswitch which advocated for increased government control over internet service providers called “net neutrality,” among other views. 2

The group sponsored the left-of-center Social Justice Film Festival in Seattle, which screens movies and documentaries designed to promote left-of-center to far-left political and cultural views. 3

Background

Lawrence Taubman, who works as the company’s CEO as of 2024, founded the Taubman Entertainment Group in 1987. 4 Taubman is a Seattle-based attorney who is most famous for financing the Occupy Wall Street-aligned website Occupy.com. 5

Notable Productions

Bopha!

The first movie the Taubman Entertainment Group produced was Bopha! which examined South Africa’s Apartheid system through a Black South African policeman’s perspective. “Bopha” means arrest or detention in the Zulu language. 6

Lawrence Taubman and his co-producer Lori McCreary developed the movie after seeing Percy Mtwa’s stage play Bopha! in the mid-1980s. The two pitched the movie to Miramax, Fine Line Features, and New Line Cinema, which all turned the movie down. They then pitched the movie to Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures. The two studios showed hesitant interest before turning the movie down. 7

Taubman then went on a blind date with a woman who referred him to actor Arsenio Hall, who loved the film and became an executive producer. Hall then persuaded Paramount Pictures to distribute the film. 8

The film starred actor and left-wing activist Danny Glover, was directed by Morgan Freeman, and was filmed in Zimbabwe. The film attracted controversy in Goromonzi, Zimbabwe, after local government officials secured themselves roles as background actors at the expense of unemployed locals. 9

Percy Mtwa sued to prevent distribution of the film in 1994 after the film’s release, claiming the filmmakers did not consult with him, but a South African court threw out the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds. 10

The movie had a budget of $11 million 11 but only made $212,483 at the box office. 12

Killswitch

The Taubman Entertainment Group produced the 2014 documentary movie Killswitch. Director Ali Akbarzadeh conceived on the idea of the movie during the Arab Spring after Arab governments used a “kill switch” to cut off internet access during protests. 13

Akbarzadeh sat down and interviewed 24 internet experts to probe whether the U.S. government had and would deploy a similar “kill switch.” Then he posted a trailer on Kickstarter to raise money to produce the film, but did not meet his funding goal. But the trailer eventually wound up in the hands of Laurence Taubman, and he agreed to fund the movie. 14

The movie told the story of former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden who fled to Russia after releasing classified materials claiming the U.S. government spied on its citizens. 15

It also told the story of left-wing computer programmer Aaron Swartz, who co-founded the group Demand Progress Action 16 and was later arrested for breaking into a computer closet at MIT where he allegedly illegally downloaded more than 4,000,000 articles and documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit digital library of books and scholarly journals. 17 Swartz killed himself while awaiting trial. 18 19

The movie also advocated for increased government regulation of internet service providers through “net neutrality.” 20

The movie’s website featured a link to allied groups, which range from left-of-center to far-left. One of the groups listed as an “ally” was RT (also known as Russia Today), a media outlet funded by the Russian government. 21

Support For Social Justice Film Festival

Taubman Entertainment Group supported the Social Justice Film Festival in Seattle, Washington. The festival presented films from a left-of-center to far-left cultural and political viewpoint. 22

According to the festival, it featured films on topics such as “incarceration, Indigenous futures, immigrant rights, the environment and sustainability, oppression, race and racism, gender equality, the arts and rights of expression and speech, animal rights, alternative lifestyles and economies, disenfranchisement, water and food insecurity, economic disparity, homelessness, exploitation, corruption, and more.” 23

References

  1. “Taubman Entertainment Group.” California Secretary of State. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business.
  2. “Ali Akbarzadeh, Director: Killswitch.” Popcorn and Vodka, February 27, 2015. https://popcornandvodka.com/2015/02/27/ali-akbarzadeh-director-killswitch/.
  3. Social Justice Film Festival. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.socialjusticefilmfestival.org/.
  4. “Taubman Entertainment Group.” California Secretary of State. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business.
  5.  Harkinson, Josh. “Huffington Post for the Occupy Crowd?” Mother Jones, April 2, 2012. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/occupy-com-website-launch/#correction.
  6. “AFI Catalog | Bopha!” AFI. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/59470.
  7. “AFI Catalog | Bopha!” AFI. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/59470.
  8. “AFI Catalog | Bopha!” AFI. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/59470.
  9.  “AFI Catalog | Bopha!” AFI. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/59470.
  10.  “AFI Catalog | Bopha!” AFI. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/59470.
  11. “AFI Catalog | Bopha!” AFI. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/59470.
  12. “Bopha! (1993) – Financial Information.” The Numbers. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Bopha#tab=summary.
  13. “Ali Akbarzadeh, Director: Killswitch.” Popcorn and Vodka, February 27, 2015. https://popcornandvodka.com/2015/02/27/ali-akbarzadeh-director-killswitch/.
  14. “Ali Akbarzadeh, Director: Killswitch.” Popcorn and Vodka, February 27, 2015. https://popcornandvodka.com/2015/02/27/ali-akbarzadeh-director-killswitch/.
  15. Killswitch the film. Killswitch. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.killswitchthefilm.com/.
  16. “About.” Demand Progress, March 11, 2024. https://demandprogress.org/about/.
  17. Schwartz, John. “Open-Access Advocate Arrested for Huge Download.” The New York Times. July 19, 2011. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20compute.html?ref=us.
  18. [1] Sam Gustin. “Aaron Swartz, Tech Prodigy and Internet Activist, Is Dead at 26.” Time. January 13, 2013. Accessed May 20, 2024. http://business.time.com/2013/01/13/tech-prodigy-and-internet-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide/
  19. Killswitch the film. Killswitch. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.killswitchthefilm.com/.
  20. “Ali Akbarzadeh, Director: Killswitch.” Popcorn and Vodka, February 27, 2015. https://popcornandvodka.com/2015/02/27/ali-akbarzadeh-director-killswitch/.
  21. “Activist Allies.” Killswitch. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.killswitchthefilm.com/activist_allies.
  22. Social Justice Film Festival. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://www.socialjusticefilmfestival.org/.
  23. “Social Justice Film Festival.” FilmFreeway. Accessed May 20, 2024. https://filmfreeway.com/SocialJusticeFilmFestival.
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Taubman Entertainment Group


Beverly Hills, CA