And... cut! Parental guidance suggested

When he spoke at Bozar, John Waters, the pope of trash, praised Belgium for being a country with no film censorship: the Belgian constitution forbids any form of censorship. Which is not to say that the country is censorship-free. Since 1920, there has been supervision on the grounds of protection of children: a commission judges whether a film should be allocated a “children admitted” label and suggests changes. In a talk he gave at Cinema Nova, Daniel Biltereyst, who lectures on film and media at the University of Ghent, had a few other observations to make about the supposed absence of censorship here. Local authorities and the courts, sometimes at the instigation of the Church, have also been known to ban films. The most notorious case was that of Nagisa Oshima’s Ai no corrida (1976) or In the Realm of the Senses, in which an extra-marital affair between a female servant, Sada, and a restaurant manager, Kichizo, develops into a searing, overpowering passion. The two flee more and more from harsh reality through sexual ecstasy intensified by a death wish. Oshima showed pubic hair (half of Japan had a heart attack), erections, and penetration and his film was condemned as pornography. In countries where the film was not banned, it was a success. In Belgium it was shown in three cinemas, including the Studio Arenberg, which is now used by Cinema Nova. Forty-eight hours later, the Brussels prosecutors seized the copies of the film. Both the management of the Brussels cinemas and the distributor were given heavy fines and suspended prison sentences.

(Ai no corrida)

Cinema Nova is taking revenge on history on 8 December by screening Ai no corrida again as part of a fascinating month-long programme on the theme of censorship. The cycle looks, for example, at Hollywood before the introduction of the Hays Code (1934), which enforced a new primness in films. After the code came in, it was no longer possible to make films like Baby Face (1933) in which Barbara Stanwyck played a woman who made a career in New York by seducing and dumping a succession of bosses. Nova also looks at the wave of erotic films from Scandinavia that reddened cheeks all over Europe in the early 1970s. After a talk by the film collector Jack Stevenson, Cinema Nova sniggers its way into the night with Inga, Greta, Olga, and Ilsa.

AND… CUT! > 22/12, Cinéma Nova, rue d’Arenbergstraat 3, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-511.24.77, www.nova-cinema.org