Banned from Cinemas
Destricted, a compilation of films that attempts to lluminate the points where art meets sexuality, is now playing in Moscow. But, as the Moscow Times (via) reports, it almost didn’t.
The film was shown at this year’s Moscow International Film Festival in late June, but its planned cinema release later that month was repeatedly postponed, amid rumors of a ban from the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency.
Sem Klebanov, president of the movie’s Russian distributor, Cinema Without Frontiers, said Wednesday that he submitted the film to the cinema agency a few weeks before the Moscow International Film Festival to obtain approval for general release. However, “they said it couldn’t be shown because it was an amoral film, it was pornography,” he said. He declined to name the officials he had spoken with.
In July and August, newspapers speculated on the reasons why the release of the film, whose Russian title is “Banned from Cinemas,” was pushed back. “Employees of the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency perceived the name of the film as telling them how to act,” Izvestia suggested on Aug. 20.
According to the agency, the reasons for the delay were merely procedural, but Klebanov maintains that his company filed all the usual documents and pointed out that in previous cases certification had only taken two weeks.
Sunday 02 Sep 2007 | Paul | Russia
