O Cinema was deliberately chosen to screen new documentary about Amy Goodman

There’s a certain poetry in bringing “Steal This Story, Please!” — a documentary about the courage to keep telling inconvenient truths — to O Cinema South Beach. This is, after all, a theater that knows a thing or two about what happens when power tries to silence a story. 

Last year, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner put forth a proposal to evict O Cinema after the independent theater programmed “No Other Land,” the Academy Award-winning documentary about the destruction of a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank. At the time, Meiner called the film a “one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people.” 

The proposal sparked outrage in the international arts community and accusations of government censorship. Documentarians including Michael Moore, Laura Poitras, and Alex Gibney signed an open letter calling the threat an attack on freedom of expression and a First Amendment violation. Ultimately, community pressure prevailed: After a huge outcry from Miami Beach residents and creatives, Meiner dropped his proposal. 

It is into that charged landscape that “Steal This Story, Please!” now arrives, and the team behind the film was deliberate in its choice to screen the film at the independent South Beach theater this month.

“O Cinema, I understand, was tested in its own way,” director Tia Lessin tells New Times over a video call, joined by the film’s subject, “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman. “It’s wonderful that the community came together and defended the cinema. This is a cinema that won’t be cowed by special interests and even by government pressure, and that’s exactly the kind of place we want to show this film.”

“Steal This Story, Please!” is a gripping portrait of independent journalism through the eyes of Goodman, whose trailblazing career has spanned three decades, from the frontlines of global conflicts to the organized chaos of daily “Democracy Now!” broadcasts. The 98-minute film spotlights independent media’s power — and peril — amid rising corporate control and political attacks on the press.

Directed by Lessin and Carl Deal, the Oscar-nominated duo behind 2008 Hurricane Katrina documentary “Trouble the Water,” the film has been making its way around the country in an intentionally independent fashion, bypassing the traditional studio distribution system in favor of arthouses, nonprofits, and community theaters that Goodman sweetly refers to as “sanctuaries of dissent.”

Lessin explains that Goodman coined the film’s title, one that doubles as a kind of manifesto. It stems from her own philosophy that exclusivity is detrimental to the well-being of journalism and, ultimately, democracy as a whole. Both Goodman and Lessin argue that while some voices and stories are amplified by mainstream corporate media, others are effectively silenced, and independent media attempts to give a voice to the voiceless.

“She’s not saying ‘steal this story, pretty please’ in a literal way,” Lessin explains. “She’s mischievously inviting folks and other mainstream media publications to open up their coverage.” 

“Democracy Now!” has no paywall, charges nothing for radio stations to air its broadcasts, and is funded entirely by its listeners and readers — not corporate sponsors or government grants. That model, Goodman insists, is what makes genuine independence possible.

“Steal This Story, Please!” arrives at a pivotal moment for American media. Lessin ticks off the pressures bearing down on the press: a president who has called journalists the enemy of the people, the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ICE arrests of reporters, and the accelerating consolidation of media into the hands of a shrinking number of billionaire owners. The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery looms especially large over the future of otherwise historically major outlets CBS News and CNN.

“These are very serious times,” Goodman says. “How do we learn about the world? We learn about it — if we don’t experience something personally — through the media. And it’s got to be through something other than a corporate lens.” 

The film’s road tour has been something of a phenomenon in itself. It premiered in New York in April, at the IFC Center, becoming the largest documentary opening there in 10 years. It then swept into Chicago’s Music Box Theatre before becoming that venue’s biggest documentary weekend in 25 years.

For South Florida audiences, the screening is both a homecoming of sorts and a call to action. The film ends with the words, “We will not be silent,” borrowed from Sophie and Hans Scholl, the German siblings who resisted the Nazis during World War II and paid the price with their lives.

“Those who care about war and peace, the climate, inequality, racial and economic justice, reproductive rights, the immigrant crackdown — they are not a fringe minority,” says Goodman, expressing sentiments that will likely resonate with O Cinema audiences. “They are the silenced majority, silenced by corporate media. Which is why we have to take it back.”

“Steal This Story, Please!” Friday, June 5, through Thursday, June 11, at O Cinema South Beach, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 786-471-3269. Tickets cost $12.50 via o-cinema.org.