PARIS: A battle is being fought in Paris over the right to see a documentary film that takes audiences deep into the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Leading intellectuals and artists, including the celebrated film director Jean-Luc Godard and the influential philosopher Etienne Balibar, have united in protest at a cancelled screening of the film this month and are calling on the French Culture Ministry to step back from censorship.

The contentious film, called Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, was made by an Israeli and Palestinian film-making duo who travelled with a camera along the geographical line that the United Nations chose - under Resolution 181 - to be the border between Palestine and the new state of Israel from 1948.

On the journey they met people from both sides of the divide who explain what the conflict has meant to them. The film was originally to have been a centrepiece in the international documentary film festival held each year in Paris, but the ministry of culture, in conjunction with the management of the Pompidou Centre, where the festival is staged, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, has ruled that the screening must be cancelled.

A joint statement argues that the film is defamatory and likely to incite anti-Semitism. A single, smaller-scale showing has been permitted, but only once an official warning has been read to the audience.

The Culture Minister, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, has defended his actions by suggesting the documentary is likely to incite public disorder.

The decision has sparked a furious response from the film- makers, Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi, and from a group of French thinkers and artists. Signing an open letter, Godard, Balibar and the renowned sociologist Pierre Vidal-Nacquet, among others, have demanded that the Ministry reverse its decision. "A culture minister ought to be protecting works of art and not side with their enemies," the letter concludes. -Dawn/The Observer News Service.