Questions remain with XXY ban
September 3, 2009
By Janet Smith
http://tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5150040&fSectionId=428&fSetId=251 (http://tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5150040&fSectionId=428&fSetId=251)
The film Ken Park begins and ends with a rape. Its capturing of teenage peer conflict, its culture of adolescent sexual hate, could be regarded as so extreme that it hurts your eyes to watch it. It certainly hurts your heart. But it was allowed on our screens. The harm was done.
Yet it took the threat of arrest and a court tribunal for South Africans to be able to see XXY, the Argentinian film which was banned outright by the Film and Publications Board (FPB) in February, in spite of having won the Critics Grand Prize in Cannes in 2007, the New Directors Award at Edinburgh and numerous other international accolades.