GagWatch

It looks like Mike Myers’ flop comedy The Love Guru may not see an Indian release after religious leaders decided to object to the film’s storyline.

The film, in which an American raised outside his country by gurus, returns to the States in order to break into the self-help business, was boycotted by religious leaders because they objected to the actor’s portrayal of a guru of unspecified faith. Eight months after its release in America, the film has been submitted for certification in India and a decision is pending, according to officials at the country’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

Indo-American Hindu statesman, Rajan Zed has been campaigning to ban the film in the country, claiming that it violates various CBFC guidelines. He claims India’s cinema laws stipulate a film has to be certified keeping “morality” in mind, as well as anything else he manages to think of.

The Goa unit of Hindu organisation, Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS) has demanded that Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire be banned on the basis that they have decided to take offence at it.

HJS spokesman, Jayesh Thali said a delegation had met Central Board of Film Certification officials in Mumbai, demanding a ban on the film.

South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned a ban on the 2006 film, Shortbus on Friday. The film had originally been banned in 2007 for its depiction of homosexuality, group sex and sadism.

“As a whole, the film cannot be regarded as simply lewd material with little artistic value. Therefore the decision to restrict its screening is not legitimate,” the court said in a statement.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions in favour of artistic freedom of expression.

In July last year, the Constitutional Court ruled as unconstitutional one provision in the censorship laws — saying its ambiguous terms could cause too many movies to be restricted.

The High Court in Delhi has overturned a government ban on showing smoking scenes in films saying that the ban violated the fundamental right of film-makers to freedom of speech and expression.

“The director of films should not have multifarious authorities breathing down their necks when indulging in creative art,” Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said.

Film-makers had condemned the ban when it was instigated in 2005 as an absurd infringement of artistic expression.

Mr Justice Kaul passed the order to revoke the ban after a junior court had earlier given a split ruling on efforts by Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt to challenge curbs on scenes of smoking in films and on television. The judge agreed that a blanket ban on films that showed smoking scenes was a direct encroachment on the creativity and free artistic expression of the film-maker.

Based on a true story, Edward Zwick’s Defiance is about three Jewish brothers who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into the Belarussian forest, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and others in danger. The film has received many plaudits for moving away from stereotyping wartime Jews as passive victims, and for being a very solid war film in its own right. But some people are not happy.

Polish historians have begun a protest campaign to sabotage the film and are demanding that Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Lech Kaczynski condemn the film for glorifying “common criminals” as national heroes.

The lead character in the film, Tewje Bielski played by Daniel Craig, has been accused by some Polish historians of carrying out vicious purges of Polish civilians during his guerilla campaign.

Matthew Horne has found himself having to speak out in support of his upcoming film, Lesbian Vampire Killers after the angrylesbians.biz website suffered a sense of humour failure and started an online petition calling for the film to be banned.

According to Horne: “You’ve got to take this film tongue in cheek. It’s a very camp affair. And nobody is saying all lesbians are murderers.” The film is released in March and promises to be a fun night out for all.

Singapore’s government announced on Friday that the state will start to allow documentary and biographical party political films that are objective and do not distort facts. An independent citizens panel will be set up to pass the films. The move comes as part of a cautious acceptance of most of the recommendations made by a council it appointed to study the impact of new media.

On political content, the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (Aims) had recommended that the current wide-ranging ban on party political films be liberalised in stages.

Minister for Information Communication and the Arts Lee Boon Yang agreed. As a first step, films that are factual and not ‘based on a distorted presentation of ideas’ will get the green light as early as March, he said.

Mr Richard Magnus, a retired Senior District Judge, will chair the political films advisory panel, which will be made up of prominent, non-partisan citizens as recommended by Aims.

Such films may be shown by political parties during an election, and they may also advertise using podcasts, vodcasts, blogs and other new media tools in election campaigns.

The Government has, however, rejected the suggestion that they decriminalise the making of party political films in general. It also turned down the suggestion that it spell out clearly the reasons for a ban on a film considered to be ‘against the public interest’ under Section 35 of the Films Act which empowers the Minister to prohibit any film.

Last year, after almost four decades, Pakistan finally lifted their ban on Indian films and sixteen films were screened in the country. However, strained ties between the two countries following the Mumbai terrror attacks, along with a dip in the fortunes of Pakistan’s film industry, appears to be signalling an end to this short lived cultural exchange.

Malik Shahnawaz Noon, chairman of the Pakistan Censor Board, has claimed that Indian films are “destroying the local film industry” and said that the board intends to re-impose the ban.

Last year, Pervez Musharraf’s government lifted the ban, but the exchange of cinema too seems to have fallen victim to the increasingly strained relations between the two countries in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes, which India blames on Pakistan.

While some were advocating a renewed ban on Hindi films, which are hugely popular in the country and seen on pirated DVDs, trade experts said the move to release Indian films commercially had revived the cinema culture in the country with theatre owners in most major cities earning a huge profit.

Last year, financially stricken theatre owners had threatened strikes if the ban on Indian movies was not lifted because local productions only saw empty houses.

Hindi movies did brisk business in Pakistan with cinema hall owners vying to get their screening rights. In 2008, a total of 54 films were released here. Of them 30 were local movies in various languages, 16 were Indian and eight were English movies.

Audiences were thrilled.

Unlike government officials, cinema owners say the recent tension between the two countries over the 26/11 attacks has not affected Pakistani movie buffs.

Mizzima (via The Melon Farmers) has picked up an announcement from Burma’s Information Ministry that makers of films and documentaries will need to seek prior permission from the Censor Board before seeking to show their films in international film festivals.

“The film censorship board has issued a new order. All films and documentary makers must seek permission before contesting at international film festivals,” a film director in Rangoon said on condition of anonymity.

According to sources in Rangoon, the new regulation was implemented after director Kyi Phyu Shin won the “2008 Best Short Film Award” of the National Geographic Society with her 15 minute-long documentary on the life of a Burmese painter called Wathone. The English-subtitled film is called Scathes of Wathone and includes interviews with the painter.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is taking on a new role as the head of a government panel on the film industry. Although some film makers are pleased by the government’s attention, others fear that Putin’s oversight means a return to communist-style state command over this crucial art form.

The new government is the result of an idea first floated at a conference on the future of cinema in St. Petersburg in October. Putin co-hosted that conference with director Nikita Mikhalkov, who heads the Russian Cinematographers Union. Although some are hopeful that the organisation will help combat intellectual piracy and help improve relations between cinema and television or between domestic filmmakers and foreign ones, others – such as film critic Yury Bogomolov – worry that the moves are ideologically driven and are likely to follow the Soviet-era practice of harnessing the influential medium to boost patriotism and support for the state.

“Now it looks as if at the highest levels of government, cinema is once again becoming the most important art form, just as television is the most important means of communication,” Bogomolov said. “But television is just television, and cinema — that is the engine for building myths, which the government sorely needs.”

Putin has made no secret of his belief that state media, including film, and the schools should actively promote patriotism and national values.