A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by Spencer »

We will all get to see it one day in one shape or another . Had a chat with Paul about what happend and all will be explained before they show it's replacement tonight. These things happen there are still plenty of other goodies to watch , personally looking forward to the loved ones a lot and the replacement film is supposed to be pretty damn good too. Relax. They are all just movies and this is just the Internet .
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by markR »

The word is the replacement film is "Buried" with Ryan Renolds!!
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by Dom »

Got back about 3am.

Buried was superb, well played Frightfest team 5/5!!!!!!!!!
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by afabear »

i hate to be the one that just wont let this lie but ive been in touch with some very helpful people at westminster council and they dont seem to have a clue why serbian film and isoyg were forced to have a bbfc cert, so FF organisers could you give out the information about who told you you had to?

the 2 emails ive got back so far are below.

Dear Simon

I am sorry to hear of your frustration. I have forwarded your email to my colleague at Special Events and they will be aim to get back to you as soon as they can.

Kind Regards
Valentina

then 20 minutes later i got this one.

Dear Simon

Could you tell me which department at Westminster City Council has the festival organiser been liaising with? Our special events team only deals with events on the public highway and is not accountable for any programming decisions of the festival organiser. We, as the Arts and Cultural Service, have not been involved in the festival.

It could be that the festival organisers were referring to the Mayor's City Hall or the UK Film Council?

If you let me know I will try my best to put you in touch with the right person.

Best regards
Valentina

Valentina Wong
Arts Information Officer
Libraries & Culture
Westminster City Council

so who exactly told them to cut the films?
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by brad1000 »

cover up???
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by rawshark »

I'm not sure who the boys deal with at Westminster, but will try and get details in the next couple of days (once they've caught up on their sleep) as it would be good for us (Revolver) to know too..

We will be looking this week at the logistics of trying to arrange some screenings of the film in an uncut form - hopefully towards the end of September / early October, so watch this space.

Also, due to time limits pre-festival, we only had the opportunity to submit the film for DVD classification (we didn't have theatrical materials ready to hand to submit for theatrical classification), so there's still a hope that there may be more leniency when the Board view the film for it's theatrical release.

Anyway, really appreciate your support on this, the more support we have from film fans, the more chance we have of being able to show this film in the UK in the version that was intended to be shown.
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by The Soapmaker »

afabear wrote:i hate to be the one that just wont let this lie but ive been in touch with some very helpful people at westminster council and they dont seem to have a clue why serbian film and isoyg were forced to have a bbfc cert, so FF organisers could you give out the information about who told you you had to?
I don't find it at all surprising that you're having trouble getting confirmation from Westminster City Council.

It's a council. They have multiple departments, none of which communicate with each other, and thousands of employees, all of whom work to a "job description" and never stray outside it. It is absolutely guaranteed that you will never get in touch with the right person, except, perhaps, weeks or months too late. Have you ever tried calling them to sort out your Council Tax or a rubbish collection?
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by Axe »

rawshark wrote: We will be looking this week at the logistics of trying to arrange some screenings of the film in an uncut form - hopefully towards the end of September / early October, so watch this space.
Sounds good.
rawshark wrote: Also, due to time limits pre-festival, we only had the opportunity to submit the film for DVD classification (we didn't have theatrical materials ready to hand to submit for theatrical classification), so there's still a hope that there may be more leniency when the Board view the film for it's theatrical release.
Yes it will be interesting to see what their decision on a theatrical release will be.
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by zoltan »

I am amazed by those few on the forum that have been having a negative attitude towards the organisers over Serbian Film's removal.
Expecting them to start posting on the forum with explantations as the festival kicks into full swing , i mean get a grip do you really think these guys have time to scratch their arse once the festival has started let alone sit posting on the net.

Plus some seem to have the idea that the boys may have made it all up and Westminster council knows nothing about it, from my experience councils don't know there left arm from there right most of the time so why would Westminster be any diffrent.
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by AndyJWS »

I suspect if Westminster Council really have nothing to do with it they shall be demanding amendments from all the newspapers that independently found it to have been their insistence that club rules were insufficient in this case.

Although then the Grauniad may also detail who "co-director Ian Jones" is ;)
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by Satans Puppy »

To be honest I work for a council here in the north and the left hand very rarely knows what the right hand is doing... Lucky if we can get the feet to go in the right direction as well.

The frightfest boys along with revolver tried their very best to get the film shown uncut or even passed and cut in time for the festival but the resulting cuts from the BBFC took away the impact of the film.

All this flaming and accusations are just silly, we don't know the Ins and outs of the situation but the frightfest boys do have a lot of respect for their punters and as a result we should give them the same level of respect.

If you're contacting the council, you'll probably get no where, they received a complaint about the film and had to follow through, that's all we need to know for now... Plus whoever dealt with the complaint probably wasn't speaking to the person next to them about it, in this climate of redundancies in the council people are towing the corrunt governments line, they're trying to come across as irreplaceable... Trying to hold on to their job so trying to keep as much of it to themselves as possible, I see it happening every day where I work.

Alans statement on the day should have been enough, he apologised and got us a cracking replacement film dammit...
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by streetrw »

Satans Puppy wrote:To be honest I work for a council here in the north and the left hand very rarely knows what the right hand is doing...
I've worked for councils before, and I think we all knew what the right hand was doing.
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by streetrw »

First off: I haven't seen A Serbian Film.
damatotomato wrote:Westminster Council from what I hear, deny this. The BBFC did not HAVE to make the cuts, whether for a festival release or a general release. And maybe they should have the power to decide on cuts subject to a festival release, seperate to a general release.
Isn't that going to cost distributors more money? They already have to submit for a general release and now have to pay again for festival screenings? To what end? The overwhelming majority of movies go through uncut anyway, so what would be the point?
Frighfest organisers are saying dumb on the subject (they like to vocally slag off Argento films at festival events because they don't really understand the director's work) but they don't comment on refunds and reasons for films being pulled.
Personally I'd have thought if there was anyone who did really understand Argento's work, it's Alan Jones....
They also promised us that ISOYG would be uncut. Anyway - I still think that, even if the BBFC cut this film for general release (and what the Guardian says has no bearing on truth for me at all, sorry!), the decision sucks.
It's not FrightFest's call, though. It's Westminster City Council's call. I think everything in the festival's entire history that hadn't already been seen by the BBFC was nodded through. I don't think Martyrs, The Girl Next Door or Inside had any problems.
And who is that person going on about A Serbian Movie being 'morally wrong' ??? The scene is symbolic of rape from birth, of a country, of a person. It's also not real and not detailed.
I guess you're talking about the baby scene here - but do we actually know whether that's one of the scenes that's been cut? There's still nothing on the BBFC's site.
Murder on Poirot is illegal and the actuality horrible. But it's simulated. It's not real. Murder is as nasty as any kind of rape. It's all nasty. But sweet old ladies from Torquay dig Murder Mysteries.
And most Poirots are rated U or PG. It's not just the content, it's how it's done. If Lucio Fulci had directed an episode of Poirot and filled it with rotting corpses and things going into eye sockets, it would have been 18 and those sweet old ladies would have pooed themselves senseless.
The BBFC cut a scene from Ages of Lulu with a naked baby at the start (gee - and who will this corrupt, the one person in every 10 million who think it's exciting in some way? - pah!) and thereby defeating the whole point of the film, and the film's title!
The scene's cut because it's an indecent image of a child and potentially falls foul of the Protection Of Children Act! Are you seriously suggesting that the BBFC should pass child pornography? Even if the scenes from Ages Of Lulu doesn't excite - and pornography is in the wrist of the beholder - it's still in direct contravention not of internal guidelines, but of the law. They didn't cut it because they wanted to - they cut it because they had to.
The BBFC are essentially bods in suits who care little about films but have a career as a social services type - this is true, you won't become a BBFC examiner without this kind of career background!! The BBFC should be made redundant and an advisory panel instated. This latest decision has exposed them as complete idiots, once again, after a few years of improved relationship with genre fans.
And replace them with what? What is this advisory panel going to do? More specifically, what is it going to do that the BBFC doesn't do already? They've still got to abide by the legislation covering animal cruelty, indecent images of children and so forth. All you're doing is changing the letterheads.
And as for the Guardian article you link to - news journalists suck, and know nothing about genre movies. The Guardian can't even spell horror. I don't trust or care about anything written by hacks. Magazine journalism in magazines such as Shivers (RIP) or DVD World etc I trust. Fangoria mostly sucks. And mags such as Empire are magazines about films for the under 16s. Use your own opinions. Form your own values.
I'd agree about Empire, and Total Film as well: there was an issue in the goodie bag and I couldn't make much headway. I think they're pretty much unreadable as anything other than promotional Hollywood fluff. There'll be a few pages of interest, a few good articles, a good critic with a good writing style, but the bulk of it is about shallow mainstream studio fare for lowest common denominator audiences.
I'm afraid that this country is denied freedom of expression because of the likes of the BBFC and horror 'fans' who are scared off by real symbolic horrors of society (which most horror fans do not revel in seeing on screen, but accept is part symbolic, part trangressive media). I don't actually like 'real' horror, I prefer stylised horror - Argento, Fulci at al. But I support it's right to be shown.
I don't believe it's that much of a freedom of expression matter. Don't forget that we haven't yet seen the BBFC's detailed list of cuts. Again, if it's material involving children in sexual scenarios: however well it's been staged, however cleverly it's been edited together, it falls foul of criminal law.
And yes, the BBFC pass films such as Salo. But not A Serbian Movie. Because Sight and Sound 'dig' Salo. They don't dig us - we are the underclass, the scum, the Araki unwashed (allegedly, and probably not, so don't edit me mr moderators!).
You're now trying to turn this into a class issue which it absolutely isn't. It's the criminal law. You're also not making sense here. Surely it's not the underclass that would see the symbolic context of A Serbian Film, it's the Sight And Sound intelligensia. Stick A Serbian Film in front of what Charlie Brooker refers to as "multiplex livestock" - the great unwashed, the village idiots at the Trocadero on a Friday night - and they won't see that context. They'll see the sex and violence and baby raping and the Heinz 57 other varieties of depravity. That context, I gather, isn't contained within the movie itself. What the director and writer said about it in an interview isn't admissible.
The BBFC person apearing on Monday NEEDS to be presented with angry opinion and needs to have nerves of steel - let's challenge the cutters, the ruiners of film and artistic freedom, let's hurl our symbolic rom-com dvds across the room - let's show the doubters that horror is a vital and real part of film and the only genre that delves deep into the horrors of the mind, the body, the political system, and the soul.
Romcoms? Romcoms? You know why the BBFC pass romcoms? Because studios submit them. The BBFC have to classify them, and there's no reason not to pass them. There's nothing in them to warrant restriction. There'll be mild swearing, moderate sex references, but that's all.
Like I said at last year's Giallo screening - if you don't get Giallo, you don't get Argento, and you don't get horror.
I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. I think I do get Argento; I know I love the best of Argento's movies - but Giallo was absolutely terrible. That's not necessarily Argento's fault - in the case of Giallo and in the case of Mother Of Tears the scripts were just not up to scratch - but it is his name on the finished product.
If you don't get that the BBFC have a grudge against horror and genre films, then you don't get why the BBFC is essentially ready to be placed in the recycle bin, and a more modern system introduced. That's the truth of the matter. Deal with this.
The BBFC don't have any such grudge - look at how many they pass, for crying out loud. Hundreds of them. And what are you going to replace them with?
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by satanslittlehelper »

I have this evening watched 'A Serbian Film', and I really can understand why this has drawn all this attention. I am glad to have watched it, but can honestly say it's not a film I will ever watch again. There were 2 scenes that truly made me feel physically sick, images that are now forever imprinted in my brain.

Now it may be that as a parent I am more affected by them than others will be. I had a similar reaction to Oldboy too. But it is still my choice to watch it, and through all the controversy it does raise important issues (to Serbia) and contains some very dark humour too.

I do consider myself to be fairly film literate and can usually read the subtext of a movie, but this one is a lot less subtle and I think your average 'multiplex-Saturday night at the movies' viewer would not see anything beyond the now infamous scenes as being anything more than what they are. Take them at face value if you like.

I am still smarting at not being able to see this at Frightfest, I am seriously concerned at what could happen under the current government and fear a return to the video nasty era.
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Re: A Serbian Film - PULLED from line-up

Post by The Soapmaker »

Some of the paranoid anti-BBFC ranting on this thread is like an inverted version of the "moral panic" which led to the Video Nasty era in the first place.

Where's the evidence that they have a "grudge against horror and genre films"? OK, this year's FrightFest happens to have been affected by cuts to a couple of films. When was the last time that happened? The Isle, maybe? Seven years ago.

The BBFC passed Irreversible uncut, Martyrs, Antichrist, 9 Songs, The Brown Bunny, The Idiots, Twentynine Palms... not all horror movies, none of them mainstream horror movies, but all controversial - some even crossed the Daily Mail's radar.

OK, we've had a change of government. But do we really think the Tories are going to come in and say "never mind the economy, forget the situation in Afghanistan, what we really want to do is ban some horror movies"? It's not as if the last government did a great deal to preserve individual freedom. ID cards anyone?
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