Jack Abramoff - Work in Film Production, and South Africa Connections

Work in Film Production, and South Africa Connections

Abramoff spent 10 years in Hollywood. He wrote and produced, with his brother Robert, the 1989 film Red Scorpion. The film had a $16 million budget and starred Dolph Lundgren playing the Spetznaz-like Soviet commando Nikolai, sent by the USSR to assassinate an African revolutionary in a country similar to Angola. Nikolai sees the evil of the Soviets and changes sides, becoming a freedom fighter for the African side.

The South African government financed the film via the International Freedom Foundation, a front-group chaired by Abramoff, as part of its efforts to undermine international sympathy for the African National Congress. The filming location was in South-West Africa (now Namibia).

On April 27, 1998, Abramoff wrote a letter to the editor of The Seattle Times rebutting an article critical of him and his alleged role as effectively a Public Relations puppet of the then-apartheid South African military. Abramoff rebutted: "The IFF was a conservative group which I headed. It was vigorously anti-Communist, but it was also actively anti-apartheid. In 1987, it was one of the first conservative groups to call for the release of Nelson Mandela, a position for which it was roundly criticized by other conservatives at the time. While I headed the IFF, we accepted funding only from private individuals and corporations and would have absolutely rejected any offer of South African military funding, or any other kind of funding from any government — good or evil."

During this period in South Africa, Abramoff first met South African–born rabbi David Lapin, who would become his religious advisor, and Lapin's brother and fellow rabbi Daniel Lapin, who allegedly introduced Abramoff to Congressman Tom DeLay (R-TX) at a Washington, DC dinner shortly after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Lapin later claimed that he did not recall the introduction.

Read more about this topic:  Jack Abramoff

Famous quotes containing the words work, film, south, africa and/or connections:

    O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
    Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d
    The work for which thou wast foretold
    To Israel, and now ly’st victorious
    Among thy slain self-kill’d
    Not willingly, but tangl’d in the fold
    Of dire necessity
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you’re making a horror film doesn’t mean you can’t make an artful film.
    David Cronenberg (b. 1943)

    The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.
    James Baldwin (1924–1987)

    America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
    Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)