Legendary film director Stanley Kubrick triggered a row which tarnished a drive to improve relations between the east and west during the cold war, newly released documents have revealed.
The director, renowned for obsessive control over his films, sparked the rumpus by refusing at the last minute to allow his classic sci-fi film 2001 A Space Odyssey to be screened at a huge festival in East Germany.
He apparently feared that the film would be illegally copied and circulated if a print was sent to the festival.
In a frantic search for other films to fill the gap, the blockbuster Star Wars was considered, but dismissed as being incomparable to 2001.
The festival showing American films was the first of its type to be held in East Germany, and was organised during the era of détente, when US and Soviet leaders were seeking to ease tensions.
American diplomats saw the festival as "a major step forward in increasing communication and understanding between both countries and peoples".
East German ministers reciprocated by acknowledging "the importance of American films to the motion picture art and of their popularity in East Germany" at a time of "developing cultural relations with the US".
But two weeks before the festival started in 1978, American diplomats were stunned to discover that 2001 could not be shown, even though it had been given top billing for more than a year and had been the centre of much negotiation.
Fred Gronich, a senior official of the Motion Picture Association of America, told the American embassy in Berlin that 2001 "was fully controlled by Stanley Kubrick who [was] not releasing any of his films for East Europe".
"Gronich alluded to [the] problem as undiscussable on phone, but with implication of past history of film piracy and that in consequence Kubrick adamant... Gronich unable [to] clarify reason why embassy not informed of difficulties with Kubrick," the diplomats reported in a secret cable released to the Guardian under the US freedom of information act.
They warned that a failure to screen the film would be a "major disappointment" and that the prestige of their embassy was at stake.
"Gronich promised [to] pursue matter, but could not be encouraging. In fact, he raised [the] possibility [of] alternate science fiction films," they added in the cable.
But he and a diplomat agreed that that Star Wars, directed by George Lucas, was "not comparable to 2001", while it would be "impossible" to get Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg as a replacement.
The embassy urgently wanted to reassure Kubrick, who lived in England for 30 years until his death in 1999, that the copy of the film would be protected at all times when it was in East Germany.
Kubrick notoriously kept control of all aspects of his films, and for example, ordered his masterpiece Clockwork Orange to be withdrawn from cinemas after fears that it was provoking copycat acts of violence.
A later cable from the embassy suggested that after some pressure, Kubrick might have relented, but that the chief executive of MGM, the company which had funded the film, refused to back down and blocked the screening of 2001.
American diplomats reported that the row was the "only disappointment" of a successful festival. Despite negotiations right down to the hour of the opening, no other sci-fi film could be arranged to fill the slot.
2001, based on a story by sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, was applauded for its innovative special effects and involved a battle between astronauts and a computer which eventually kills them.
