When Jason Eisener wanted to evaluate the feature film he did as part of his screen arts studies at the new Scotland Community College in 2003, the Oxford Theater reserved in Halifax to show it. But there was a problem.
To show Death fistthat Eisener describes as a martial arts film, zombie, post-apocalyptic, would need to classify it.
The bankrupt student borrowed approximately $ 100 of his parents so that the film is reviewed by the Maritime Film Classification Board. Eisener spent only a couple of hundreds of dollars doing Death fistWith the budget for the ribbons, the film was filmed and food coloring was required to make false blood.
“It felt like an achievement that my friends and I could make a movie that could be classified and someone thought it was crazy enough to give it a rating R,” said Eisener, now known as the filmmaker behind films as movies like movies Vagabundo with a shotgun and television programs such as Dark Ring Side.
The province recently announced that the government agency that determined how many years was to be renting a film or watching it in a New Scotland theater is closing. The Maritime Film Classification Board was sometimes found in the center of the controversy over censorship and morals.
In a world prior to the Internet where one of the main forms of entertainment was renting a film from a rental store, the work of the Board despised hopes that many young people sought to rent something considered not appropriate for their age, or they could simply make their parents rent it.
A sticker placed on the cover of the film included labels such as General (G), parents guide (PG), accompaniment of adults (AA) or restricted (R).
Jennifer Vanderburgh, who teaches courses on cinema, television and media at Saint Mary University in Halifax, described the closure of the Board as a sign of the times.
“I would say … there is less agency for parents to control what their children are seeing due to children’s access to the Internet,” he said. “You know, it seems like a picturesque idea now that we could restrict anything to people with internet access.”
The origins of the Board date back to more than a century in New Scotland, where its objective was cinematographic censorship. It was not until the 1980s that his approach focused on the qualification films, said Adam Grant, an official with the New Scotland service, the department that supervises the Board.
He said that in 1993, an agreement was signed between the maritime provinces that would cause New Scotland to review the films and the other two provinces use the qualifications.
Currently, films distributors must pay $ 3.95 per minute to classify a film in Nueva Scotia. To check a DVD, the cost is a fixed rate of $ 39.80 per film, Grant said.
The number of films that the review reviews have decreased annually over the years, Grant said. In 2015, 1,452 films were classified. Last year, it was 611.
The work of reviewing the films is sometimes made from a room on the second floor at the office of the Alcohol and Gaming Division of the province in Windmill Road in Dartmouth, NS, at the same time, the films were seen using a 35 millimeter projector, but today’s films are seen in computers there.
Sometimes, movies are checked in the cinema in Dartmouth Crossing due to the format in which the films are provided, Grant said.
What is it like to classify films
Randy Hume de East Chester, NS, is one of the 10 people who review films for the province. He has been doing it from time to time for 14 years and said that the part -time concert that pays $ 50 for half -day work will be lost.
“It’s work, but it’s fun … and I’ve met many good people,” News told CBC in a day that saw the new Rami Malek movie, The fan.
Because the other critic could not.
And if you are imagining it to make it armed with some popcorn, snacks and a drink, think again. Hume said that when they do film classifications in the cinema, it is usually before the theater is open for the day.
Hume said that while watching movies, he pays attention to things like language and violence and seeks “something that really will merge people.”
How the film’s board will be replaced
When closing the film’s board, New Scotland will depend on the classifications provided by the distributors.
“Our qualifications are supposed to reflect our morals and our beliefs here in the maritime … but if we are obtaining them from Hollywood or Toronto or wherever, this will not really reflect our morals at all, so we are going to lose that,” Hume said.
He said that with the distributors that determine the grades, he is concerned that “they are wrong on the side that makes them the greatest amount of money.”
Once new Scotland closes its board, only three provinces will have them: BC, Alberta and Quebec.
Hume said he can only remember when he voted to ban a movie. It was an animated film.
“I don’t even remember the title, but they were only unpleasant and unpleasant images, all unpleasant,” Hume said.
Very publicized prohibitions
Forbidden films, excluding pornography, have been rare.
A Decision of the Supreme Court of Canada of 1978 was made with respect to Nova Scotia’s decision to prohibit Last tango in Paris of theaters.
In 1997, Bastard outside Carolina It was originally prohibited in New Scotland. Described by a Daily News journalist as a “unrestricted look of the tragic life of a girl who grows in the house of a stepfather of South Carolina who hits her and violates her:” It was prohibited by going “beyond the acceptable community standards,” according to an official of the Film Board at that time.
The decision attracted many criticisms, including the executive director of the Kids Help Foundation.
“I am not a film critic, but I can assure you that this film does not exaggerate how children are affected by abuse,” said Heather Sproule in an article by Daily News on February 26, 1997. “It is explicit and brutal, but no more brutal than what a mistreated child experiences.”
Vanderburgh said the film is a powerful medium where what is shown can appear as reality, but in fact it is manufactured.
“Movies often show horrible things in an effort to gather support, to try to eradicate that horrible thing of society,” he said. “Those things are not necessarily endorsed of what they are showing.”
The prohibition of Bastard outside Carolina He was revoked in March 1997.
Other controversies of the Maritime Film Classification Board
The film board has remained mostly outside the center of attention, but there are some notable exceptions.
In 2001, AnibalA sequel to The silence of the lambsIt was qualified as an adult accompaniment (AA), which means that children under 14 could watch the film when they accompany an adult. It had a stricter rating in most other places.
The film included scenes in which “a man feeds the wild boars and his face is eaten; in another, a man is hung on the side of a building with his intestines hanging out,” according to an article by Daily News on February 25, 2001.
A spokesman for the Film Board cited commercial reasons as a role in not giving it a restricted rating (R).
“The film would lose a bit of the market, which had a great relationship with the decision,” said the spokesman in the article.
The Board was also in the news in 1994 when it proposed that the cost of classifying porn films would be $ 4 per minute, compared to $ 1.75 for non -porn movies.
“It is a subtle form of censorship,” said the director of the Atlantic Film Festival in an article by Daily News on April 26, 1994. “Indeed, the strategy is to maintain pornography outside the province by making it difficult to enter.”
Even the Minister of the Cabinet responsible for the department seemed to agree.
“He [the classification fee] He will create problems for films that should not be here, I will tell you, “Guy Brown told Daily News.
Closing timeline
Grant said that another eight to 12 months will probably pass before the Maritime Film Classification Board closes as the province develops regulations for this to happen.
Eisener, Dartmouth’s filmmaker, said he loved the appearance of the stickers that the board placed in films that indicate his qualification.
He said he did not realize that the Board was still in operation until the announcement was closing.
“I think I never really saw the need for it,” he said from Los Angeles, where he is working on future projects. “I really like the design of the stickers and I thought those would make really great designs for a shirt.”
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