Censoring the Moving Image

"Manifestos for the Twenty-first Century" is a "Seagull Series" created in collaboration with "Index on Censorship", a home and a voice for freedom of expression since it was founded in 1972. Film's power to move, to disturb, to terrify is unlike that of any other medium. This is why, throughout its history, Film has been feared, controlled and censored as well as celebrated. The notion that censorship was necessary - to preserve society, to protect people from each other, to save ourselves from our baser instincts - has been widely held by all levels of society. But, as the first great mass medium, cinema provided politicians and other guardians of morality with their prime target for censorship in the 20th Century.In the West, the debates over censorship in film have usually focused on sex and violence, but censorship for political and religious reasons is still a reality in many parts of the world, and film-makers still often risk imprisonment or death. Analysing how film audiences have been treated like children and filmmakers as potential enemies of the state, Julian Petley and Philip French present the savage and ongoing history of film and censorship.