Removed by Order of the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification
I have just finished butchering a re-edit of DAMON AND HUNTER to remove all the the material the OFLC finds objectionable — no erect penises, not touching of each other’s flacid penises, and no butt cracks. I’m cooking it into a .m4v file and will post it to the blog when it’s finished.
In the meantime, yesterday an Australian journalist asked me if I had an “offical reaction” to the OFLC decission.
I have been a photographer my entire adult life. In the name of bearing witness to the human condition I’ve documented unspeakable suffering, violence, and death; and for that I’ve been praised as a courageous witness. When I review the scope of people, places and events that have passed before my lens, I find myself unable to understand the censor’s rational for “protecting” adults from photographic images of sexuality. But allowing that I could be wrong about that, certainly adults don’t need to be protected from a film like DAMON AND HUNTER. DAMON AND HUNTERR is a film about what’s best in all of us.
I also don’t understand, in a country where the rules governing X-rated material are honored mostly in the breach, that the government has decided to put its foot down at an event like QueerDOC. It smacks of misplaced priorities and selective enforcement.
DAMON AND HUNTER seems caught in the gap between shabbily crafted video porn and “serious films” about sex like 9 SONGS or KEN PARK. I find the attitudes expressed about sex and the moving image in both of these approaches off-putting, or worse, dull, which I why I (try) to make earnest, well-crafted films about what a delightful part of life sex is for most people most of the time. I just don’t think the rules governing the OFLC ever anticipated a film like DAMON AND HUNTER, which although it’s completely explicit, arousing and erotic, is also completely joyful, and utterly appropriate for adults to enjoy watching in a cinema.
The film is an affirmation that physical love is a wonderful and wholesome part of our humanity. The need and desire to connect with another person in profoundly physical and intimate way is something we all easily recognize as one of the great gifts of being alive, and there’s something special about coming together as an audience, in a theater, and acknowledging and celebrating the innate goodness of our sexual nature.
The classification of DAMON AND HUNTER as X-rated (as our other films have also been classified by the OFLC) prevents these film from being seen as they were intended: in a theater where the power of the cinema can transform a house full of strangers into an audience. There is something magical about being in the dark, with a bunch of people you don’t know, all responding as one to the film. It’s amplifying and affirming of one’s own emotions. In the case of DAMON AND HUNTER I think there’s a good chance the wound is that much deeper because this film is a celebration of physical love between two men, and there are so very few examples in cinema of authentic gay sex being documented, let alone celebrated.
I’ve just found out directly from the OFLC that because of the film’s X-rating if an Australian gay men’s health center were to use DAMON AND HUNTER in the same way it’s being used here in the states by the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline and the Institute for Gay Men’s Health at GMHC, that the health center would be breaking the law. Unbelievable!
We have retained counsel and are currently acting with all possible speed to try and appeal the OFLC’s ruling and have DAMON AND HUNTER reclassified as R. But the catch 22 of the X rating is that it denies a film the revenues to be garnered by the wider distribution allowed R-rated films. Comstock Films is an completely independent operation. My wife and I finance our films independently, produce them independently, and distribute them independently. We don’t have the resources of time and money to battle the Australian government. The appeal itself costs $8,000, and if the OFLC denies our request for a waver, there won’t be much we can do. We’re exploring the idea of selling a “special edition” fundraising DVD at a premium price to finance the appeal, with the windfall donated to charity if the OFLC were to wave the fee, but the time table for organizing is tight.
What we do have is a lovely film, a film that can be defended both on principal *and* it’s merits as entertainment, a film an “ordinary Australian” doesn’t have to feel embarrassed about owning, watching, or speaking on behalf of. Perhaps that will count for something.
August 24th, 2006 at 2:10 am
I think that you’d have similar reactions in the UK and the United States if any push was made for it to be released into cinemas, it’s not just Australia. We have the most famous Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in the world, so we’re not that backward.
August 24th, 2006 at 4:12 am
I feel like we need a fighting fund for you but I don’t know how to set one up. Suggestions?
August 24th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I always have to wonder (and worry) that so many societies with which I am familiar would rather show 24/7 explicit graphic violence than one single hour of explicit, graphic sex.
Is there any way to distribute unrated versions? I know I’d pay for one.
August 25th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Anastasia, perhaps there would be a reation, but I don’t think we’d have the same reaction here in the States. Unlike Australia our governement is not empowered to block the screening of a film in a theater. Our previous films have played at festivals in the US, and D&H will make its US debut in a festival later this Autumn.
Ms.Naughty, the best way to “fund the fight” is to let people know what’s going on, and let people know that buying one of our DVDs is a purchase they won’t regret.
Sara, it is a quandary, this sex vs. violence thing. The un-cut version is available on DVD, either directly from us, or at any number of retailer. Check the Where to Buy page in the nav bar.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Tony, you’d still have a media furore in the states if a graphic film like that was shown in theatres in the US. My understanding is that it would be the equivalent of an X rating here in Australia? X rated here, is classifed pornography.
But more importantly, the reality is that porn can be marketed over the web, each country has it’s own laws that are to be respected. We’re not complete prudes here, we have a free to air TV channel that features a lot of nudity, sex and sexual themes in the context of a story, and when films veer more toward pornography, then they’re subjected to the censors to edit the film. You’d have the same issues in the United Kingdom, because a large amount of the pornography that is bought in sex stores there is R rated, not X rated. So if you look to release this in the UK, in theatres, and you come across issues there, what are you going to post ‘narrow minded Brits?’…
In other parts of the blogosphere, some coalesce to put forth ‘one view’ about this issue. I’ve read many sentences that rave on about Australian censorship, which implies that we’re heavily censored (and we’re not), to ‘Australian apathy’ and those of you who put forth this view have a motivation as well, and that’s profit, that’s natural because it takes many efforts to produce a film, but from what I understand is that any X rated film can be marketed on the web, and that enables freedom from censorship as well.
I’d really like to see this film distributed in mainstream theatres in the United States, not health centres or educational centres, and then I’d be interested to see the level of responses among a mixed audience, particularly in the current climate where religious right groups are concerned. But to freak out about Australia, because of a procedure that is standard, has been in place for years (when plenty of highly graphic sexual films are legal to purchase online or in Canberra/Northern Territory) is a little over the top. That’s what I think because I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m not going to sit there and digest rubbish (that others have stated regarding our ’strict’ censorship where some shows of the 70’s wouldn’t make it past censors now -cos that’s fiction) just because people have an agenda to promote a film for money, and I know - because I live here - that as a society we’re not frigid, and our laws aren’t frigid in terms of film. It’s just that all pornography has to comply to federal laws, just like it does in the United States.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Anastasia, there are a lot of things I might say in response to your post, but I have no desire to engage you in a debate as to whether Australia is more tolerant than the US, or whether Australian censorship laws create a more or less restrictive envionrnment than US obscenity laws. There are a wealth of resources you can availe yourself to online and you can come to your own conclusions.
But I do have a question for you about this “sell it on the internet” idea of yours. Can you find any films anywhere that are available only on the internet that are shot on film? I don’t think you’ll be able to find anyone who is making their money excusively through internet sales that shoots on film. Why do you suppose that might be?