Censoring the Moving Image
Julian Petley, Philip French
4.25 x 7 inches, 134 pp, 14 halftones. May 2008
ISBN : 9781905422555
Rs 395.00 (HB)
$20.00 (HB)
£9.99 (HB)
Buy (HB) 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.
Julian Petley is Professor of Film and Television at Brunel University. He is principal editor of the Journal of British Cinema and Television and co-chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. His publications include Ill Effects: the Media-Violence Debate, A Young Citizen´s Guide to the Media in Politics, and Culture Wars: the Media and the Left in Britain.
Philip French is one of Britain’s best-known and most respected film critics. Senior producer for BBC Radio from 1959 to 1990, he has been the Observer’s film critic since 1978, and has written regularly for numerous newspapers and magazines including the Financial Times, London Magazine, The Times, the New Statesman, the Spectator and Sight & Sound. His books as author or editor include Malle on Malle (1992), The Faber Book of Movie Verse (1993), Wild Strawberries (1995) and Cult Movies (1999). French has been a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival and a Booker Prize judge.
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