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recommended as being unsuitable for children (" Special A" certificate) was 46 including two shorts and one serial —as against 28. Two films were granted certification for screening by film societies only. This year saw the introduction of a new use for an already-existing type of special conditional certificate, by extending it to permit the ordinary theatrical exhibition of certain films to specified age-groups only. Its two-fold effect is definitely to exclude children under the specified age from seeing films which are considered much too mature, or in other ways quite unsuitable, for them ; and at the same time, by so doing, to make it possible for adults to see films which might otherwise have to be banned entirely or else cut drastically. Thus the interests of adults as well as children are safeguarded. Up to the end of March, 4 films had been granted certificates of this type, though not all of these had been released for exhibition by that date. This new usage for an old certificate is still on trial, but reactions up to the end of the period under review have been most satisfactory, and the innovation has been widely welcomed. To it may be partly attributed the fact that no films had to be rejected outright this year, as compared with 4 rejections by the Censor in the previous period. Appeals Although no films were banned outright, appeals affecting 7 films were heard by the Board of Appeal. In 3of these cases the distributors appealed against certain excisions required by the Censor, 2 of the appeals being rejected and 1 upheld. Three other appeals were against the type of certificates given by the Censor; 2of them, against " Special A" certificates, were rejected, and 1 against an "A" certificate was allowed, the film being approved for universal exhibition as a result. The remaining appeal was against rejection by the Censor of a film examined in the previous year, the Board upholding the Censor's decision and disallowing the appeal. Types oe Excision There has been much recent discussion, especially in reports from Great Britain, about the incidence of undue violence in the content of many current films, and its alleged relationship to certain types of crime. The British Board of Film Censors has twice in the past year protested to Hollywood producers about the inclusion of such material in their pictures. In view of this, there may be fairly wide interest in the results of an analysis which has, for the first time, been prepared by the New Zealand Censor to show the reasons for the excisions made in the films submitted to him during the year. A total of 147 individual cuts, involving 97 films, were made on the grounds of wanton violence, unnecessary brutality, over-prolonged fighting, over-emphasis on murder, sadism, torture, terrifying or gruesome incidents, and scenes of women being struck by men. In 20 of the above films, the incidence of the offending material might be described as very marked. The number of individual cuts made for all other reasons was 63, involving 46 films. Thus out of every 10 cuts which had to be made, 7 were for reasons which may be embraced under the general heading of " violence." Further analysis of the " violent " material removed by the New Zealand censorship shows that 30 separate cuts involving 25 films (6 of them trailers) were made because the striking of women was shown ; 15 cuts were made because of an undue emphasis on torture, flogging, or physical intimidation; and there were 51 individual cuts, involving 38 films, to remove terrifying or gruesome elements. (Note. —Some films demanded cutting for " non-violent " as well as " violent " reasons, and some contained a mixture of the " violent" elements, so that there is a certain overlapping of the figures in this respect.)

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