Banned Films in Australia

Morgue Street is a 2012 Italy short horror thriller by Alberto Viavattene.
With Mario Cellini, Désirée Giorgetti, Roberto Nali.

Morgue Street was slated for screening at the A Night Of Horror Film Festival in Sidney, but the Australian Classification Board banned it with a 'Refused Classification' rating, two days before the screening, claiming

its material that is considered to offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.

Morgue Street is based upon the story The Murders in The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe. It tells the story of two prostitutes, mother and daughter, struggling against a mysterious creature that breaks into their home.

Brian Yuzna called it An original artistic horror while cult author Jack Ketchum blessed it as impressive and perverse .

By the way of a hint about the reasons for the ban, as well as horror film festivals, it was also screened at the Berlin Porn Film Festival.

I Want Your Love is a 2012 USA drama by Travis Mathews.
With Jesse Metzger, Brontez Purnell, Ben Jasper.

A feature film that includes explicit scenes of gay male sex has been banned by the Australian Film Censorship Board. I Want Your Love , written and directed by young American filmmaker Travis Mathews, was due to screen at queer film festivals around Australia.

Festival films are generally granted exemptions from the censorship process. Festivals provide synopses of the works they are screening but the board can then ask to see individual films.

Melbourne Queer Film Festival director Lisa Daniel says that in her 15 years at the festival, I Want Your Love is the first film that has been refused an exemption. It has been seen in many festivals around the world, and its distributors have told her this is the first time it has been banned. Mathews is a well-known filmmaker, and the decision is an embarrassment for Australia, she says.

The film focuses on a young gay man who is preparing to leave San Francisco after living there for 10 years. The film shows his last 36 hours in the city, and a party thrown for him by his friends, in which his ambivalent feelings about departure are clarified.

The film was also on the program at Sydney's Queer Screen and the Brisbane Queer Film Festival.

Jain Moralee, director of Queer Screen, said she was very disappointed that she would be unable to show the work. The sex scene, she says, is a six-minute montage of friends, housemates and partygoers that is part of the narrative context of the film. She describes Mathews as a filmmaker who explores the line between narrative and documentary.

Update: Petition to Overturn the refused exemption status of the film I Want Your Love

23rd February 2013. See petition from change.org

There is no reason why this film should not be shown to a paying adult audience within the context of curated film festivals. I Want Your Love has screened at every major queer film festival in the world and is getting a DVD release in the United States this month. Why are we the only country in the world to refuse its citizens the right to see it?

To: Ms Lesley O'Brien - director, Australian Classification Board

We the undersigned believe that your decision to refuse exemption to Australian queer film festivals to screen Travis Mathew's film I Want Your Love is wrong.

I Want Your Love shows us the modern gay experience with intimacy and frankness. It has a level of reality that is refreshing and reflects what life is really like for many gay men. Honest, intimate depictions of gay love and sex do not harm us to see.

I Want Your Love shows love and sex between happy, healthy and consenting gay men. While it contains actual sex, it is shown within a non-violent, intelligent and artistic narrative. This element is therefore not gratuitous and should not form a reason why it should be refused exemption.

We believe there is no reason why this film should not be shown to a paying adult audience within the context of curated film festivals. I Want Your Love has screened at every major queer film festival in the world and is getting a DVD release in the United States this month. We ask you to reflect on why we are the only country in the world to refuse its citizens the right to see it?

In light of this, we ask you to overturn the refused exemption status of the film I Want Your Love.

...Sign the petition

Update: Petition Result

6th March 2013. Based on article from minivannews.com

To everyone who signed the petition

This is to let you know that a hard copy of the petition was sent to the Australian Classification Board yesterday. It contained 2398 signatures and 54 pages of your comments.

Your signatures send a strong message. Your comments are articulate and powerful. More powerful and persuading than the legislation that the censors have been hiding behind.

I thank you for signing the petition and arguing your point so well. Let's hope some sense transfers from us to them. I will let you know.

Yours sincerely,
Grant Scicluna

The Oscar-nominated star James Franco has weighed into the censorship debate via a Youtube message, in which he speaks directly to the Australian Classification Board.

Franco describes the banning of I Want Your Love as hypocritical and disappointing :

Travis is making this film, including sex, because he wants to explore story and character and the nuances that sex contains.

Because films have been banned because of sex, sex and films hasn't had a chance to grow and become a sophisticated storytelling device. And frankly adults should be able to choose. They're not going in blind. I don't know why in this day and age, something like this --- a film that is using sex not for titillation but to talk about being human --- is being banned. It's just embarrassing.

The Australian Classification Board not just embarrasses by the films it chooses to ban and the inconsistencies in its approach --- it also embarrasses by the films it allows to screen, or simply doesn't bother to review.

The Australian film censor has banned the screening of Jennifer Lyon Bells short film, Matinée at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF).

The MUFF wrote to oppose this decision on two grounds:

Firstly, the decision negates the artistic merits of the film. While graphically sexual, Matinée is a picture which embodies many of the qualities which should be sought after in high quality artistic filmmaking. The lead performances are strong and memorable, and the direction and production design work twofold, both ensuring a subtle, entirely naturalistic feel, and a highly stylized, enigmatic and atmospheric world, the likes of which is often attempted in independent cinema but rarely so deftly achieved.

Secondly, and most importantly, MUFF opposes the censor's decision on the grounds that it represents a hypocritical and troubling suppression of transgressive female-centric sexuality on film. The modus operandi of Blue Artichoke Films, Bells production company, is to create films which portray realistic sexual intimacy, depict empowered female characters, possess artistic merit and strong narratives, and do not fall back upon the damaging and often dangerous stereotypes of female sexuality that the Western media is accustomed to. In other words, Bell is looking to produce films about sexuality which women can enjoy, free of masculine control.

It is outrageous that the censor has sought fit to ban Matinée for the sole reason that it depicts actual sex. The sex depicted in the film, while real, is set within a relationship based on love and mutual desire. What we see in Matinée is two consenting adults (characters, not porn clichés, with a deep and complex established relationship) making love. That is all. Nowhere in this film do we see any violence, sexual abuse, cruelty or malice; we merely see the intimacy which occurs between loving partners every day in real life. The fact that this depiction is considered to be too disturbing for an adult audience, and yet films which depict shocking and graphic violence and/or sexual abuse (yes, simulated, but made to look and feel real) are passed by the censor, is unacceptable.