New Zealand OFLC teaching kids how to censor
September 23, 2008 – 7:05 pmNew Zealand’s Office of Film & Literature Classification is teaching school students the fine art of classification and censorship. Michelle Baker from the OFLC said their Censor For A Day program is an opportunity for students to learn how censorship really worked and to apply it to future films.
Around 80 year 13 students, from four Bay schools, took part in the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s (OFLC) Censor For A Day session at Bay City Cinemas, Tauranga, yesterday.
The teens were given the task of watching a yet to be released movie and then working through the classification criteria to give it a rating.
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‘It’s been really informative,’ said Mount Maunganui College year 13 student Amanda Willis.
‘I didn’t realise there were so many processes to think about while censoring.’
If kids really dig censorship, lets port this baby to XBOX and make millions.
I love how open the NZ OFLC is about their duties. They often publish extremely detailed reports outlining their decisions and unlike the Australian Classification Board, they don’t pretend ‘censorship’ isn’t part of what they do.
This report on the NZ version of the Peaceful Pill (dated 12 September 08) is 24 pages long — These days the ACB doesn’t even bother to publish a three paragraph press release when they ban a game.
One Response to “New Zealand OFLC teaching kids how to censor”
I too find it rather irritating that detailed information and reports cannot be found on the OFLC’s (AU) website. I’ll often use the BBFC website as a research tool and starting point when trying to find out if a film or TV series was released on video in the UK post 1985. I don’t think even half of the stuff the OFLC have reviewed is even in the online database.
Both the NZ OFLC and BBFC have fairly detailed descriptions when something is censored or detailed reasons why something is banned, while the AU OFLC just says “RC”, and that’s only if the title appears in the online database.
By Matthew on Sep 24, 2008