TonyComstock
On the Prowl
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- Mar 21, 2005
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I had been making posts ballyhooing the success of DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER to the Young Men, Twinks, Jocks & Hunks forum, but since this post is more about politics than porn, I thought this would be a more appropriate venue.
DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER has been having tremendous success in Australia. It's been covered in a number of magazines and newspapers, including DNA, The Melbourne Star, B-News, MCV, and QMagazine.
In July it played to an overflow audience at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, and went on to be named Best Documentary at the fest. From there we were invited to show the film at QueerDOC, the world's premiere gay and lesbian documentary film festival, in Sydney this September.
Well the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification just dropped the hammer on DAMON AND HUNTER.
This past week QueerDOC received a letter notifying them that screening D&H would be a violation of Section 8 of the 2004 Film Festival Guidelines. That's right, in Australia the government can tell you what you can and can't show at a film festival.
What will happen now, I don't know. The festival has already distributed nearly 50,000 copies of the program, including two screenings of DAMON AND HUNTER. We've already printed up hundreds of posters and flyers and made arrangements to have them distributed throughout Sydney. The festival is currently in negotiations with the OFLC to see if they can show DAMON AND HUNTER in some sort of edited form, and we're trying to make an appeal of the ratings. (Winterbottom's 9 SONGS, a film that featured extremely explicit footage of straight sex received a reduced rating from the OFLC. But without the major distributor backing of a film like 9 SONGS I'm doubtful our appeal will be successful.) If I were a betting man, I'd bet that Sydney is not going to get the chance to see the film that Melbourne enjoyed so very much.
Of all the films the OFLC might target for censorship, DAMON AND HUNTER seems like a particular inappropriate target. Aside from the recognition the film has so far received as an outstanding work of cinema, it's also been recognized for it's value as a life-affirming and educational document. DAMON AND HUNTER is held in the Kinsey Library at the world renowned Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana. It's already being used by the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, and by the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline. Just this week it's been being passed around by deligates at the 16th Annual HIV/AIDS Conference in Toronto Cananda. Why? Because DAMON AND HUNTER is singular in it's compassionate, humane, frank, and erotic depiction of gay love and gay sex. And apparently that's something that the government of Australia needs to keep the people of Sydney, especially the gay men of Sydney, from seeing.
I wish I could ask people to do something, but there's really nothing to do except sit and wait and see how it turns out. In the mean time, thanks for letting me blow off some steam!
-TC
DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER has been having tremendous success in Australia. It's been covered in a number of magazines and newspapers, including DNA, The Melbourne Star, B-News, MCV, and QMagazine.
In July it played to an overflow audience at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, and went on to be named Best Documentary at the fest. From there we were invited to show the film at QueerDOC, the world's premiere gay and lesbian documentary film festival, in Sydney this September.
Well the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification just dropped the hammer on DAMON AND HUNTER.
This past week QueerDOC received a letter notifying them that screening D&H would be a violation of Section 8 of the 2004 Film Festival Guidelines. That's right, in Australia the government can tell you what you can and can't show at a film festival.
What will happen now, I don't know. The festival has already distributed nearly 50,000 copies of the program, including two screenings of DAMON AND HUNTER. We've already printed up hundreds of posters and flyers and made arrangements to have them distributed throughout Sydney. The festival is currently in negotiations with the OFLC to see if they can show DAMON AND HUNTER in some sort of edited form, and we're trying to make an appeal of the ratings. (Winterbottom's 9 SONGS, a film that featured extremely explicit footage of straight sex received a reduced rating from the OFLC. But without the major distributor backing of a film like 9 SONGS I'm doubtful our appeal will be successful.) If I were a betting man, I'd bet that Sydney is not going to get the chance to see the film that Melbourne enjoyed so very much.
Of all the films the OFLC might target for censorship, DAMON AND HUNTER seems like a particular inappropriate target. Aside from the recognition the film has so far received as an outstanding work of cinema, it's also been recognized for it's value as a life-affirming and educational document. DAMON AND HUNTER is held in the Kinsey Library at the world renowned Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana. It's already being used by the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, and by the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline. Just this week it's been being passed around by deligates at the 16th Annual HIV/AIDS Conference in Toronto Cananda. Why? Because DAMON AND HUNTER is singular in it's compassionate, humane, frank, and erotic depiction of gay love and gay sex. And apparently that's something that the government of Australia needs to keep the people of Sydney, especially the gay men of Sydney, from seeing.
I wish I could ask people to do something, but there's really nothing to do except sit and wait and see how it turns out. In the mean time, thanks for letting me blow off some steam!
-TC
