Screendaily reports that four documentaries scheduled for the 21st Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF), which kicked off on April 4, have been banned by local censors.
According to the report, two of the documentaries — Arab-American director Bassam Haddad's Arabs and Terrorism, about opposing views on political terror, and Mano Khalil's David the Tolhildan, which follows the son of a former Swiss Federal Supreme Court president who joined the Kurdish armed independence movement PKK — "were 'disallowed' on account of their sympathetic portrayal of allegedly terrorist organizations."
"Films which portray terrorist organizations in a positive light by lending support and voice to justify their cause through violence are disallowed under the film classification guidelines," said Amy Chua, chairman of Singapore's Board of Film Censors.
The other two banned documentaries were Ryuichi Hiroki's Bakushi, a portrayal of kinbaku, described as "the Japanese practice of tying up women in elaborate knots before proceeding to S&M stage shows," and Parvez Sharma's A Jihad for Love (above), in which a gay Muslim filmmaker talks to openly gay and lesbian Muslims in 12 countries.
SIFF festival director Philip Cheah told Screendaily that "in the early days of silent film, D.W. Griffith made the epic Intolerance. Now that we have color and sound, we unfortunately still have intolerance on a more grand epic scale."
The Tuesday screening of Hiner Saleem's Dol – The Valley of Tambourines, a depiction of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict at the Iran and Iraq border, will apparently go on as that film received a NC16 rating.
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Tuesday, April 8
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Monday, April 7
Melbourne Queer Film Festival: Q&A with Festival Director Lisa Daniel
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Sunday, April 6
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Saturday, April 5
Ebertfest: Roger Ebert's Film Festival 2008
Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of 2001
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Friday, April 4
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Thursday, April 3
London's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Tuesday, April 1
John Huston Documentary Double Bill: SAN PIETRO and LET THERE BE LIGHT
The Swiss film "David the tolhildan" was allready showen towice in Swiss TV and was presented in many film festivals such:
Crakaw -Poland
Split-Croatia
Solothurn-Switzerland
Aljazeera-Qatar
Panorama-Greece
Orient film fest -Geneva
and many others…
It is a shame to cenzor a nice film, because of Turkish protests…
And I turned up there, refunded my tickets because I refused to watch some film they put up to appease me.
Apparently, Singapore's attempt to unconvincingly portray itself as a booming new arts scene is tainted with doses of hypocrisy.
Don't believe a word they say, you artsy people! Don't feed their delusions.
Censorship is alive and well in 2008. Apparently, we still need idiots to tell us what we can see and hear. Ah, I feel much more protected now.