Censored out of the blue
In 1990, David Gray, an unemployed gun collector living in Aramoana, New Zealand, went on a rampage in which 13 people were shot dead, before Gray himself was shot by police. The film, Out of the Blue attempts to tell this story.
The film’s director, Robert Sarkies, has already shown the film to those directly affected by the tragedy and now New Zealand’s chief censor, Bill Hastings has arranged a meeting between himself, the Aramoana community and the families of victims.
“What we hear during consultation will be incorporated into the classification, and we want to talk to as many people as possible about this,” he said.
According to Harris, this was prompted by a letter from a family member of one of the victims and this is the problem. It does look very much like the people affected by the tragedy are using their position to try to prevent a film from being shown, as some of the quotes from the residents clearly indicate:
[Rosemarie] Clouston, of Christchurch, said she had told Sarkies the movie should not have been made after seeing a preview.
“The story itself is disgusting and I don’t feel making a movie about it and bringing it back and putting it in people’s faces is right,” she said.
According to Hastings:
“People are still alive that have had to deal with the original event – it’s not as if it’s a film about World War 1. It’s a live issue, so it presents an unusual situation.”
But it’s not that unusual, as the current spate of 9/11 films so clearly indicates. The danger here is that as soon as you start banning things on the basis that “people are still alive that have had to deal with the original event” you create - at the very least - a very dangerous grey area for every contemporary documentary.
Sunday 17 Sep 2006 | Paul | New Zealand
sounds more like an emotional appeal than a call for censorship to me. I don’t suppose he has appealed to the authorities to ban it?
It is an emotional appeal. But the fact that the chief censor is talking to - and, presumably, taking seriously - people like Rosemarie Clouston who thinks the film should never have been made does strike me as being a worrying step in the direction of giving victims groups a veto over what films can and cannot be made.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but I do think that this is a story worth following.