Category: Film

A few fun videos to share. First, this commercial from Air New Zealand: And who says censorship destroys art? In this video, censorship is art.

The Globe and Mail and other sources recently reported that the Culture Minister in Quebec has asked the Régie du cinéma to consider adding an appropriate warning notice for films that depict suicide. Quebec has the highest suicide rates in Canada, and the idea of a suicide warning for films is supported by suicide prevention groups… Continue reading Quebec to Consider Suicide Warning

The New Censors: Movies and the Culture Wars was published in 1997. Author Charles Lyon looks at how the decline of government censorship in the the United States was followed by a rise in censorship attempts by social groups on the left and right of the political spectrum. Although the book is about movies, and… Continue reading Won’t Someone Think of the Children

Whenever people worry about “bad” content on the internet, however you define bad content, a proposed solution is to require search engines to censor their results. This leads to earnest discussion over whether or not forcing search engines to censor results will solve the problem, and at what cost. For example, could movie piracy be… Continue reading Censoring Search Engines

One of the persistent myths about the Ontario Film Review Board (OFRB) is that they banned the NFB anti-pornography  documentary “Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography.” Wikipedia is one of the sources that perpetuates this myth. As with all myths, there is an element of truth, but here’s the whole story. In the… Continue reading The “Not a Love Story” Myth

The Ontario Government created a Board of Censors in 1911. That same year saw boards established to the west in Manitoba, to the east in Quebec, and to the south in Pennsylvania. Major cities had censors for stage plays, and with purpose built theatres showing ever longer and more depraved movies, something needed to be… Continue reading The Americans are Coming! The Americans are Coming!

After an early experiment “judging each film on its own merits,” Ontario re-instated formal standards in 1920. Prohibited films included those that were degrading, immoral, improperly suggestive, harmful, and indecent, or that showed foreign flags, cruelty to animals, firearms, violence, crime, arson, insanity, murder, suicide and breaking the law (except in good natured comedies). Also… Continue reading Movie Theatres are Dangerous, and so is Nationalism – Censorship in 1920