“Indeed, for all its defects, life loves balance, if it was up to life every cloud would have a silver lining, every concavity would have its convexity, there would be no farewell without arrival, and word, gesture and glance would behave like inseparable triplets who always say the same thing in all circumstances.” Jose Saramago – The Cave
My film got banned from MUFF as did Tony Comstock's "Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit", as did others. Funny how my short film played the One Minute Film Festival in Switzerland; which was not an underground festival but a fairly mainstream international one without a peep of protest from the chocolate loving Swiss.
I don’t understand the processes at work here. An underground film festival with a target market of people completely prepared for challenging or sense flexing cinema, totally aware of the potential content of the films they are going to see, possibly one hundred percent supportive of subversive or fringe cinema, get audited by a kind of mauve (Pink trying to be purple - to borrow some Whistler) militia who has consulted the mob (to borrow a Henry Miller favourite) and decided that they, and only they shall have the final say on what kind of material is suitable for us as a public to subscribe to.
Why does sex cause all the controversy? It’s sex for goodness sake. It is fucking, humping, fornicating, rooting, copulating, and it is done by billions of people worldwide every day – and that is why there are billions of people worldwide to do it – even if all you want in life is kids, then you got to screw to get them. If I want to add some sort of pseudo religious mockery over the whole process, I’d say that God invented the fuck as some sort of heavenly porn channel. I imagine the angels with their robes hitched, spread eagled on the couch shaped clouds, having a wank to some couple in Greenland going at it in the kitchen.
If I made a short film that had me say spitting on the street – why not pull that film? Surely spitting on the street is considered disgusting? Surely we don’t want our impressionable minds confronted with the slow motion ricochet of mucus bouncing off the pavement and onto the sandal of someone waiting at a bus stop. Surely this anti-social act must be considered something we only do in private in the shower with the lights off and the curtains drawn. It all goes around in circles though doesn’t it? Just look at all the periods in history when values and morals loosened, you see them wedged between periods of rigid conservatism. A younger generation comes bursting through with new ideas, fresh outlooks and approaches, and then they get old becoming stifled and conservative – then their children grow up only to try and tip the scales again … so goes this revolving door of human development.
I’ve never had a film banned by the Office of Literature, Film and Classification before. The thing is that my film was a challenge to the OFLC because their definition of pornography is material intended to arouse, looks like they got aroused in sixty seconds, good for them, it that may just kick their libidos back into business.
I'll just post Richard Wolstencroft's MUFF newsletter in this post ...
MUFF 8 films banned!
The Following films have been banned from the OFLC:
70k
Schulmädchen-Report: Was Eltern nicht für möglich halten (aka The Schoolgirl Report)
Sex Wish
The Farmer's Daughter
Ashley & Kisha: Finding the Right Fit
Whore
60 Second Relief
We will replacing them with other films from the MUFF program.
This Sunday 70k will be replaced with a second screening of Streetsweeper… a good MUFF Neu that we can play. Whore and 60 Second Relief are withdrawn and nothing will fill their place. The Other films will be replaced. More details on Monday.
Will the media even cover this? Do people care about censorship in this country?
Letter to OFLC
Here is copy of a letter sent to our OFLC contact Amy Wooding. Any response we will share with our MUFF audience:
Hi Amy,
I thought I'd write to you about this year's decision.
So the films I cannot play at MUFF 8 are the following:
70k, Schulmädchen-Report: Was Eltern nicht für möglich halten (aka The Schoolgirl Report), Sex Wish, The Farmer's Daughter, Ashley & Kisha: Finding the Right Fit, Whore and 60 Second Relief
Is this correct?
I will comply and withdraw them from screenings and replace them with films you have granted permission for me to play (like Moonlight and Magic, Left Ear, etc).
A few small questions, you might be able to answer or maybe the OFLC director can answer them (If you have his email I'll cc this to him):
Why is pornography of the most gross and offensive nature (like shitting and pissing films) available for sale in most Adult bookshops in Victoria?
Also: Are not X rated films only supposed to be available in Canberra but for sale in 90% of Adult shops in Vic and NSW and in other states?
Why is MUFF referred to the justice department for wishing to screen a couple of classy or forgotten pieces of erotica with artistic merit to an audience over 18 (who are keen to see them) and nothing done about the illegal X rated sale of videos and DVD's in sex shops that is rampant?
Is there not a hint of corruption or hypocrisy and definitely absurdity here?
Why are X rated films banned at all! It begs the question given the ready availability of it in on the Internet? Available on any PC, anywhere.
A MUFF screening is a minor problem compared to the flaunting of your rules every day of every year by the Adult Sex Industry.
Why are films like Shortbus and 9 Songs passed though they clearly contravene some of your guidelines?
Why is MIFF allowed to play a film like Exterminating Angles in a section that focussed on perversity and erotica though that too contravenes your guideline? And we cannot do it?
We will comply with your absurd ruling out of fear of prosecution to our small festival but register our complaint also that this is neither fair or just. We believe strongly it represents a violation of the basic human rights of Australian citizens to freedom of speech, assembly and expression.
Enabling a festival like MUFF or MIFF to play whatever they choose from the classy end of the sex industry will lift both festivals standing in the International community and not reveal a backward 1950's attitude to sex and censorship in Australia. Your own guidelines date from over 50 years ago. Surely a review is in order?
I am cc-ing this email to the MIFF Festival Director Richard Moore for his interest. His comments and feelings on the matter I would be interested to hear.
Any answers to these questions or our complaint will be greatly appreciated from the OFLC.
This letter is not written in disrespect but in a wish for better clarification of the important issues it contains.
Best Regards
Richard Wolstencroft
PS. Why is 70k banned it has no sex or violence at all does it?
MUFF opens tonight at Toff in Town come down and support a festival that believes in fighting censorship!
11 said knowingly:
Circles inside of circle, Rupert. Circles inside of circles.
Holy cow! Its more hypocritical bollocks than you get in Britain !!
The arts world (art, film, writing, etc) is mind boggling to me, always has been and always will be. While I appreciate the sentiments that arts circles express in regard to freedom of expression and all that stuff, there's a lot of bullshit and hypocrisy. I have many days where some editors piss me off, for example, because a lot of the time it can be who one knows, or whose arse one kisses.
On 9 Songs?
I was suprised by that film. It wasn't the content that shocked me, but in Australia it's bloody impossible or illegal to have a picture of an erect penis in Cleo and Cosmopolitan magazines (mind you, one can always find a blowjob 'know-how' article in each from time to time). Years ago, when Australian Woman's Forum existed, erect penises were still illegal, even though the mag was for over 18's and then you have a film like 9 Songs depicting a blowjob, and a full on ejaculation scene. As bitch as it will sound (toward Winterbottom), a part of me thinks that it got through because of the director's name. The sex was all right in it, more realistic than the sex with brass knobs 9 and a Half Weeks, but the dialogue was bollocks. the cinematography was average, and the soundtrack (sound) was crap. It was more fun watching Tommy Lee and Pam.
There's a lot of hypocrisy in Australia, but it's everywhere were sex is concered. It's as though marketability wins over anything that's independent (as Winterbottom's film did), and it's a pain in the arse. It's no small wonder that the film industry in Australia is the way it is, as is the literary scene: dour for the future.
how frustrating ... (i am watching 'strictly ballroom' as i type, my view of Australia becoming quite warped)
Tony,
yes, the wheels on the business goes 'round and 'round, 'round and 'round.
Rups :)
Mutley,
the dark ages in the sun burnt country indeed.
Rups xox
Anastasia,
yes there is much hypocrisy in any medium of exhibiting personal or public expression, funny that these ideas were the same bundle of problems authors like Bernard Shaw was struggling with one hundred years ago ...
"Why are our occasional attempts to deal with the sex problem on the stage so repulsive and dreary that even those who are most determined that sex questions shall be held open and their discussion kept free, cannot pretend to relish these joyless attempts at social sanitation?" - BS 1903
I'm not aiming with my work to dissolve it into the public majority but I need an audience otherwise my work will go to pot. I don't believe in creating for oneself, I think that method 100 proof contrary to what art is, an audience provides a shared communication, learning from each other it the key to ... "the building up of an intellectual consciousness of her own instinctive purpose", to borrow Shaw again.
Rups xox
Bittersweet me,
it's very patronising being fed the same messages from these government bodies, sometimes I feel that perhaps it is the only catalyst to nurturing rebellious streaks, I'm hoping given a few hundred years it backfires on them.
Rups xox
I haven't seen the film so I can't comment. But yes, it does sound very hypocritical. And I can understand why you're upset about it all.
wholeheartedly agree, an audience is important for that to and fro exchange of ideas and emotions that enable continuity.
The OFLC is just amazing to me. There are films with sexual (even if subtle) undertones that blend violence (Wolf Creek), and these are able to be passed through because of their subtle undertones.
Dear dear Rupert, I am sorry to hear about your film, sorry about Tony's films and sorry for all the rest too but mostly I am feeling sorry for us all - small inequities, travesties of justice, none of them life threatening individually but the weight, the weight becomes crushing after a while.
There is no avenue for recourse with the OFLC or with their Exemptions Officer - an unclassified film that they believe would receive an X rating because of depictions of actual sex cannot be screened publicly so no exemption will be made for a festival screening regardless of the context of the sexual activity (this is straight from the OFLC direct to me)- see the steam emitting from my ears?
That the choice of what gets screened and seen by Australian audiences - adults mind you, is in the hands of a small group of Government officials is galling in the extreme.
Should we go out and get drunk and swear a lot Rupert, would it help? I am rendered nearly speechless with this latest round of fiasco. I am tempted to stage a film giveaway at Glitch on the night to replace the Ashley and Kisha screening
Writing to the OFLC and or Phil Ruddock and expressing your concerns is still a valid thing to do if for nothing but to see the complaint listed in their annual report as a record that someone, somewhere noticed that censorship is alive and well in Australia and thought it unjust.
Post a Comment