Controversey at FrightFest 2010

• 1st Sep 2010

Things got off to a bumpy start with the announcement that one of the major releases had been pulled from the festival by the director himself. The film was Kaboom, the director Greg Araki (Nowhere, Mysterious Skin). What was shocking about this move was that the director didn’t feel this was the right place for his film and all but insulted the horror genre audience as a whole. He earned even less points with critics for this move and has possibly soured himself to a lot of people. He has responded to such claims however stating that this film was not removed due to the type of audience, but was more a marketing move by himself and the producers of the film.

Kaboom went down a storm at Cannes and it is distribution they are looking for now and he seems to feel that FrightFest is better for generating release buzz, as opposed to distribution. Perhaps he is unaware that there are other films on at FrightFest that are awaiting distribution. So while the Cannes Film Festival is great for seeking distribution deals, smaller places like FrightFest (Yes the “Fest” part of that also means “Festival” Greg!) wouldn’t have harmed his film in anyway and if anything would have generated even more words in its favour.

So while it’s easy to sympathise with someone who claims they didn’t know it was originally slotted to be screened, and claims to have been misquoted – his actual reason stated for pulling the film still doesn’t make too much sense and was still a bad move on their part as all it has generated now is bad word of mouth (not for the film thankfully, but sadly for the film maker).

However, the show must go and the magnificent team behind FrightFest always seem to have a back-up plan – an alternate film stepped into place and Kaboom went bang!

This wasn’t the only major problem they were to have. Literally, days before screening a film on the bill called A Serbian Film came under the rather belated eye of the Westminister Council who thought it right to request around the figure of 49 cuts (3 mins 48 seconds). It isn’t easy to re-cut a film to this specification and then have it resubmitted again (to which even this cut may still be rejected) and then get it onscreen in a tarnished version.

Despite the film being played at festivals around the globe without any hassle, the UK once again appears to have reared its ugly uncensored head. This of course turns out to be quite the turn up of controversy as on the very last day of the festival is a documentary about that very subject (Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape) which rather cleverly included a mention to A Serbian Film. Yes, apparently us adults are not responsible enough to pick and chose the films we are allowed to watch, so we have to have the government do it for us.  God knows they seem to make the right decisions about everything else so why not make a pig’s ear out of this too. Still, until such a time as they ban the internet, people seem to be content in the knowledge that if they really wanted to see the film that they could very well find it online.

It makes the future of censorship look a little vague as there are many more avenues to access material and we are not living in a world that is as fear driven as the early 80’s were.  True  – the media can still rule the public opinion with bias – but there are also so many more voices out there now that can combat strong opinion, as opposed to the few before.

To counter this argument, although as consumers we fight and demand freedom of speech and artistic liberty to make work that can be viewed by anyone, we should also perhaps look at the argument from the other point of view as well.

The Government – whether they believe in it or not – is worried about minds being warped and children being corrupted. Of course, many artists and fans out there did indeed themselves watch such material when they were of a young age. Perhaps they did get the odd nightmare and scare from their experiences but if anything it has only set to define them as film-makers and aid in their growth to maturity – and not made them all homicidal maniacs. Having said that though, it is still important to recognise that censorship does serve its purpose and it should be enforced when necessary. For example, you wouldn’t want to show hardcore pornography or perhaps the grimmest of violence to a child of say 5 years old. But while we have this kind of censorship in place it should be the job of the adult owner of the material to keep it safely locked away, and not a government who feels the need to firstly take that responsibility away from grown adults but then to interfere with the work by the artist as well.

Film-makers are calling out for people to write in complaints about such matters citing that it is best to write passionately about specific work and why it should be seen instead of merely going on about censorship. An argument about a specific work’s purpose in the world will give much more gravity that a rant ever will.

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape is out now to buy.