The Office of Film and Literature Classification have banned the latest film from Larry Clark, due to appear at the Sydney Film Festival.
The film, Ken Park, includes scenes of explicit sex, suicide and auto-erotic asphyxiation. It has been refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification.
When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, some observers described Ken Park as too hard-core for cinema release. But it has since screened at numerous festivals. [...]
For the first time since the sexually explicit French film Baise-Moi last year, the Office of Film and Literature Classification has refused classification for a film. After a 6-1 decision, the board said Ken Park dealt with sexual matters "in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults". The film contained scenes of actual sexual activity involving actors playing minors. [...]
The film is understood to have been submitted for classification by a distributor wanting to release it on video. The festival has appealed and hopes for a decision before the film's scheduled screenings on June 17 and 18.
Interesting. I was under the impression that film festivals had some sort of special dispensation from the OFLC to let films be screened without classification, since the festivals are restricted to over-18s anyway. Evidently that goes out the window if a distributor is involved. Once again we will no doubt have the endless debate about whether reasonable adults should take greater offence at what the film depicts or at the way in which the OFLC denies them their right as a reasonable adult to decide for themselves whether or not they want to see the film.
(Note: the Amazon links below are only there as part of standard Blogcritics practice and should not be read as an endorsement by me of Larry Clark or his films; he strikes me as a leery old perv with nothing of interest or use to say.)
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