Film Censorship

the Censors proves that there is always something new to discover about "The Master of Suspense." The Alfred Hitchcock Wiki, https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Hitchcock lists over 200 books on Alfred Hitchcock and his films, the majority published within the past twenty years. This number does not include thousands of articles, reviews, interviews, nor The Hitchcock Annual, an intermittently printed journal. With these enormous repositories of information at hand one might wonder what remains to be said, but Hitchcock and the Censors offers new insights. It is informative even for post-production professionals who are familiar with Hitchcock's mastery of editing, creative use of sound, and memorable music. Most editors have likely studied the shower scene in Psycho (1960) ad infinitum. For the list of The Motion Picture Editors Guild 75 best edited films, including several directed by Hitchcock see the May/June 2012 issue of Cinemontage. While he may not have handed out ...

The introduction of innovative methods of statecraft institutionalised surveillance in the name of good governance. The modernization of surveillance initiated censorship that was legitimised in India by the British government during the colonial period. The Indian government appropriated the concept of censorship from the colonial masters, and exhibited and justified, more often than not, in a perverse manner, that depiction of sexually explicit contents and representation of contentious events that may lead to communal clashes will be

Au début du XXIe siècle, en France, il est des images filmées dont l'État interdit l'accès à une catégorie du public, les mineurs, parce que leurs effets sont jugés dangereux : ce sont des images d'actes sexuels, des images d'actes violents, ou les deux. De quelle instance procèdent ces décisions ? Selon quels critères ? Avec quelles conséquences en cas de contestation de la décision du gouvernement, aussi bien par les artistes que par des associations de spectateurs au nom de la protection de la jeunesse et du respect de la dignité humaine ?
L'ouvrage analyse comment les commissaires interprètent et rendent un avis sur les films. Il se penche aussi sur la manière dont des décisions ministérielles délivrant des visas ont été remises en cause à plusieurs reprises depuis le film "Baise-moi" en 2000. Il peut sembler évident que la liberté d'expression en France, un État se présentant comme démocratique, ne cesse de s'étendre et que cette extension sera acquise pour toujours. Pourtant, en pénétrant dans les coulisses de la « censure » au cinéma telle qu'elle s'exerce aujourd'hui, ce que la lectrice ou le lecteur sont invités à découvrir, c'est pourquoi la liberté d'expression n'est jamais définitivement gagnée.

There are various kinds of censorship, but most often this term is connected with some kind of political tense and oppression. However, many important intellectual or artistic movements have developed under censorship in various countries over the years. So does censorship have a positive or negative influence on people's work and creation? Do people become more creative or intellectually fertile when they are oppressed in some way? In recent years – as it is often said – democracy throughout the world has seemed to collapse, and various political forces (e.g. ISIS or pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine) have oppressed people. Those who have decided to comment on current political situations have been punished for their words (as the journalists of Charlie Hebdo), and those who have broken national or political taboo have been incarcerated (as the members of a Russian feminist band Pussy Riot). When we live in such times, we start to think about the past – comparing it to presence – and ask ourselves numerous questions: Where does the freedom end, and where does the oppression start? What can we do to prevent such situations? How can we live under censorship and political oppression? We would like to share our queries with researchers with various experience, that is why we invite scholars interested and involved in: We encourage scholars from various countries and cultures to visit our conference, so the intellectual experience we share is deeper and multi-level! Different forms of presentations are encouraged, including case studies, theoretical investigations, problem-oriented arguments, and comparative analyses. We will be happy to hear from both experienced scholars and young academics at the start of their careers, as well as doctoral students. We also invite all persons interested in participating in the conference as listeners, without giving a presentation. We hope that due to its interdisciplinary nature, the conference will bring many interesting observations on and discussions about the role of censorship in the past and in the present-day world. Our repertoire of suggested topics includes but is not restricted to: 1. Social life: • social effects of censorship • social effects of political oppression • societies living under oppression • minorities influenced by censorship • minorities influenced by political oppression • violating human rights under political oppression • migrations caused by political oppression • censorship and exile

Der Aufsatz untersucht am Beispiel Hamburgs, wie vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg das Kino zu einem Ort von Kinderöffentlichkeit wurde. Zwischen pädgogischen Strategien, den Filmgenuss Heranwachsender zu regulieren, und Strategien symbolischer Herausforderung der Erwachsenen durch Kinder und Jugendliche entwickelte sich die Praxis, das Kino temporär zu einem von Halbwüchsigen eigensinnig genutzten Raum zu machen.

This article seeks to understand the reasons for the disappearance of the kiss from Hindi films from the mid 30s on. Indian films from the late 1920s and early 1930s did have kisses, unlike later films. I argue that the absence of the kiss in Hindi film roughly between the late 30s and late 80s is related to a reaction of the Indian elite to the contempt shown by the colonizers towards native cultures, people, customs, principles and especially morals. A common opinion among the British held Indians as decadent, effeminate, promiscuous, impotent, weak, lazy and generally immoral. In reaction, the Indian Hindu elite made a considerable effort to "moralize" the culture and the people, repressing especially women and lower castes, in a process that intensified as the struggle for independence progressed. For Hindus seeking emancipation, there was a connection between eroticism and subjection. That is, they believed that a community that gave in to lust was more vulnerable, which would explain why India was colonized in the first place (since it was believed that medieval India was more “lustful”). Therefore, the repression of lust, and thus also of the erotic, was also thought to have an important role in strengthening the nation. In the late XIX and early XX centuries, as the Hindu community sought to create a new, strong, masculine and moral identity for itself, one that could bring about independence, it tried to purge Hindu culture of all that was seen as obscene. As the urge for independence was becoming more pressing in the 1930s, the intensity of the moral purging would have become greater. The representation of kisses in films would have been a casualty of this process. This article seeks, therefore, to trace the historic change in the Indian attitude towards the representation of the erotic between the late XVIII and early XX centuries.

This article studies post-war Italy’s forgetful attitude towards its Fascist past by interpreting a political measure, the Togliatti amnesty (1946), and 1950s film censorship as ‘institutionalised forms of (…) amnesia’ (Ricoeur 2004, 452). The amnesty, which erased the Fascists’ legal responsibility for war and political crimes, represented the first act of oblivion of the Republican political establishment, embodying a forgetful mindset that influenced Italian culture through institutional instruments like film censorship. In 1950s Italy, censorship acted as a further form of institutionalised amnesia aimed at erasing from films the traces of the compromising continuity between the Fascist past and the democratic present. The story of the making and unmaking of the Italian episode of I vinti by Michelangelo Antonioni is a meaningful example of this dynamic. Producers and government commissioners censored the plot and changed it from a story about a neo-fascist militant to one about a young bourgeois who smuggles cigarettes. However, Antonioni resisted the institutional imposition to forget by choosing locations where the material dimension of the landscape still embodied the Fascist legacy of the country.

Au cinéma, la Sainte Face a été plus dissimulée qu’exhibée – le plus souvent par le biais de voiles de Véronique rares et indistincts ou de linceuls pliés et mouvementés. Mais le motif hante le médium filmique à un niveau épistémologique, dans l’apparition même du visage du Christ sur la « toile » écranique. Cet article explore la manière dont la construction cinématographique de l’image christique a été traversée d’un intertexte avec la Sainte Face, sorte de paradigme pour la représentation du visage de Jésus au cinéma. Différentes pratiques et discours sont abordés, qui montrent combien « l’incarnation » de l’acteur, la « révélation » du gros plan, la mystification de l’éclairage, les « apparitions » du montage et la dématérialisation de la « projection » ont pu être envisagés en termes acheiropoïètes, et aboutir même à la censure du visage du Christ à l’écran, à la disparition de ces icônes trop « vraies ».

This essay explores one of the first prolonged public relations battles faced by the Hays Office: a crusade by a Los Angeles-based humane society, the American Animal Defense League, which accused the industry of countless cruelties to animals in the making of motion pictures. Drawing on MPPDA records and popular press accounts, the essay demonstrates how Hays, animal welfare advocates, and the press all negotiated with each other. What looked like cruelty on screen (a.k.a. "suggestive" cruelty), actual cruelty inflicted in the production process, and negligent daily care of animals in studios' hands were all considered as these parties attempted to come to an understanding of what constituted cruelty in the first place, what ought to be done about it, and who should be held responsible.

Film censorship screens the nation as a 'way of seeing' that is both fundamental to the art of governance and vulnerable to the flexibility of contemporary global images. In Thailand, this historically-conditioned regime arose in the geopolitics of the 1930 Film Act, the Motion Pictures and Video Act of 2008, and a coterminous regulation of visuality as a form of cultural governance. I pursue a close reading of two banned films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Nontawat Numbenchapol, respectively, to illustrate the aesthetics of film censorship in light of the development of a national cinema, especially to consider the strategies that film-makers use to negotiate the governance of vision. There will be those who wonder why this matters; why an independent film-maker's movie getting shelved should be of concern to anyone. It's because what happens in the film industry shows us more than how the board of censors works. It shows us how Thailand works. And that really is important. 1

India has the widest movie industry in the world, taking on a mean of nearly one thousand feature films and nearly fifteen hundred short films per annum. Film production and exhibition occupy a crucial place within the field of culture, tradition, and lifestyle of any country. Films play a very vital role in shaping popular opinion and imparting knowledge and understanding of the lives and traditions of people. The favored appeal and accessibility of films make them a crucial instrument of aesthetic education for broad sectors of the population. To exhibit the films made in the country there is a Central Board of Film Certification which presently views the content overdoing decency and morality and doesn't violate the liberty of speech and expression. Cinema in a country like ours has a strong impact not only on economic but also on social outlook of the country. The country has a history of the same and has developed an interesting way to grant the censorship certificate to the same.

Commercial Hong Kong films produced between the 1960s to early 1970s were generally politically neutral, or politically neutered, in thematic content. This muting of overt political ideologies in Hong Kong cinema was encouraged by the colonial authorities to decrease the dangers brought by the Cold War to the colonial government's precarious grasp on power in the colony. The ideological war between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hong Kong during this period, which began in the late 1940s, reflected intense Cold War ideologies that pitted the 'free world' against the communist bloc. 1 The organizational structures of Hong Kong film studios were politicized in this environment, with most holding allegiance to either the KMT or CCP. 2 Filmmakers in Hong Kong, however, were induced to ensure their film content was apolitical by the strict censorship systems, operating not only in Hong Kong but also in the essential foreign markets of Taiwan and various Southeast Asian countries. There was a consequent dilution of any strong political stance in relation to the nation-state. Support or condemnation of neighbouring political ideologies or governments was prohibited, resulting in the disappearance of direct references to political entities in Hong Kong films of this period. 3 The 1956 Double Ten riots, ignited by KMT supporters, erupted due to contesting ideologies about what constituted 'China', and were a climax to the struggles taking place between the left-and right-wing unions and organizations in 1950s Hong Kong. The ability of the KMT and the CCP to mobilize posed a great threat to the stability of the colonial government's regime, and the ideological opposition between the two political factions continued throughout the 1960s in Hong Kong.

Scarface is one of the most recognized films of the early 1930s Pre-Code era. Most research of this film has been directed at how Scarface works as an important summation of the gangster genre. In addition, historians often refer to the film as an early biopic of real life gangster Al Capone. What has not been covered in depth is the lengthy censorship battle between producer Howard Hughes and the censorship boards in Hollywood and around the United States. Several articles touch on the censorship issues but quickly defer to larger industry issues of the day. The purpose of this paper is to trace the specific trajectory of Scarface through the censorship process. Relying on underutilized Scarface records in the MPPDA archives as well as the trade press archives of the early 1930s, this paper conveys the story of one of the most contested films during the censorship years in Hollywood.

Met de na 1945 in Nederland zo populaire verzetsretoriek benadrukken babyboomers graag hoe taai de taboes waren die zij doorbraken en, bij gevolg, hoe bevrij dend hun bij dragen aan de Nederlandse cultuur zij n geweest. Een mooi voorbeeld is Wat niet mocht. Een overzicht van censuur, ernstige en minder ernstige gevallen van vrij heidsbeknotting in Nederland, samengesteld door Wim Hazeu (°1940) uit 1972, met een tweede, aangevulde druk tien jaar later. Het is een indrukwekkende collectie chronologisch gepresenteerde nieuwsberichten, krantenknipsels, foto's, spotprenten, processtukken en pamfletten, die samen, zoals de titel aangeeft, een overzicht presenteren van kleine en grote censuurgevallen. Op het omslag valt links bovenaan de foto van een ernstig kij kende Gerard Reve op en onder de grote, schuin over de gehele bladzij de gedrukte rode letters die de titel Wat niet mocht spellen, herkent de enigszins ingevoerde lezer een sleutelpassage uit Reves proza die centraal stond tij dens het zogenaamde Ezelproces ('… ik zal Hem begrij pen en meteen met Hem naar bed gaan, maar ik doe zwachtels om Zij n hoefijjes, dat ik niet te veel schrammen krij g als Hij spartelt bij het klaarkomen.') -een van de meest becommentarieerde momenten uit de Nederlandse censuurgeschiedenis. 2 Opvallenderwij s beslaat dit compendium niet de jaren 1940-1945 (alsof toen helemaal niets mocht?) en evenmin de in de publieke verbeelding zo met morele gestrengheid geassocieerde periode van de wederopbouw die volgde op de oorlog. Wat niet mocht begint om onduidelij ke redenen in 1962 wanneer de Commissie Propaganda Nederlandse Boek (CPNB) weigert een door henzelf bestelde eenakter van W.F. Hermans op te laten voeren bij de opening van de Boekenweek. Meteen een interessant geval, want door met dit incident een boek over censuur te openen suggereert de samensteller dat de CPNB aan artistieke vrij heidsberoving deed. De mogelij kheid dat het de organisatie en/of beoogd regisseur Wim Sonneveld om een kwalitatieve afwij zing van het stuk Uitgever Oorwurm 1 Met dank aan Rommy Albers (EYE/Amsterdam), Agnes Andeweg, Tom Gerritsen, Thunnis van Oort, Elif Rongen (EYE/Amsterdam), Jann Ruyters en Judith Thissen voor inhoudelij ke en logistieke bij stand. 2 Zie hierover onder meer

Since its beginnings, Luchino Visconti’s career was characterized by scandals, controversies, censures and even seizures, as a consequence of a particularly reactionary context but also of a transgressive intention which found its main expression in the representation of alternative sexualities and masculinities. Through a large amount of unpublished documents preserved in various archives and among Visconti’s papers, this book aims to study this largely overlooked aspect of Visconti’s work in relation to its cultural context, focusing on five case studies: the staging of Marcel Achard’s “Adamo” (1945) and Giovanni Testori’s “L’Arialda” (1961), and the films “Ossessione” (1943), “Senso” (1954) and “Rocco e i suoi fratelli” (1960).

Um 1900 formten sich Züge der modernen Massenkultur aus, die bis in die Gegenwart wirken. Die neue Populärkultur war Abschluss und Neuformierung wesentlicher Trends aus dem letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts. Unwiderruflich wurden Schönheit und Kunst zum Lebenselement der Massen; zugleich stigmatisierte man die populären Künste als "Schund". Der Verknüpfung beider Erfahrungen verdankt sich die Ambivalenz, mit der wir bis heute dem Populären entgegentreten.

Si bien es cierto que la traducción nos aleja de esas provincias lindantes con el silencio de las que hablaba Steiner, este trabajo de la traductora y profesora Purificación Meseguer plantea una hipótesis bien diferente: la de la traducción como medio de reproducción de los dispositivos de censura, y lo hace con un corpus que nos es cercano, tanto en el espacio como en el tiempo, ya que esas traducciones espurias son algunas de las publicadas durante los años del franquismo.

This paper is invested in exploring the sensory affect that is created through censorship. It is invested in unravelling the complex interaction between the films of Anurag Kashyap and the institution of censorship, the sensibilities of which are capitalized and appropriated into the aesthetic effect of the film. It also looks at how such a deployment constructs the cult of a transgressive auteur. I argue that the deafening ‘beep’ that screams of the otherwise silencing practices of censorship is what guides the way to unraveling the subversion of censorship in the filmic text. Taking cue from Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) which looks at cinema as the ultimate pervert art, telling us how to desire, this paper asserts that censorship doesn’t erase the profane, instead it points to its very utterance. I argue how Kashyap’s films’ profilmic text becomes the site of censorship standing out as material evidence to its very censoring. The ‘beeped’ or censored word becomes a provocation focusing attention onto itself by mobilizing its unspeakability through marketing the product as “controversial”. I posit that Anurag Kashyap capitalizes on this recognition. I look at the force of publicity that is created by censorship in Kashyap’s public discourse on censorship, in his negotiations with the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) from before the planned commercial release of his first directorial venture Paanch to his ongoing battle with the CBFC over refusing to use the court mandated no smoking warning in ‘Ugly’ (2014).

Cette recherche retrace l’évolution de la cinématographie roumaine depuis la  2de Guerre Mondiale jusqu’à la chute du régime communiste par le prisme de la censure, en s’attardant en particulier sur « l’époque Nicolae Ceaușescu » (1965-1989), remarquable par la quantité de films censurés. Pendant les quelques décennies de son existence, le régime communiste roumain n’a jamais relâché son contrôle sur le cinéma ; celui-ci a pris plusieurs formes en fonction du contexte politique, économique et social, allant des pressions exercées par la police politique sur les cinéastes à l’interdiction totale des films. L’effet d’un tel contrôle extensif a été une cinématographie qui n’a pas réussi à percer au-delà des frontières nationales et l’inhibition de l’éclosion d’une école nationale de cinéma. Cette thèse est donc l’occasion de s’interroger sur le rapport entre la censure et la production d’une cinématographie « invisible » ou « médiocre », à travers l’analyse des discours officiels concernant la culture, des institutions ayant des fonctions censoriales variables (l’Association des Cinéastes, les Maisons de Films, la Securitate, la Radio Europe Libre et autres), des trajectoires des réalisateurs les plus représentatifs de la période (Lucian Pintilie, Mircea Daneliuc, Radu Gabrea, Mircea Saucan, Mircea Veroiu, Alexandru Tatos, Dan Pita) et des films qui ont été particulièrement affectés par des immixtions politiques. En fin de compte, pour le régime communiste roumain, le cinéma a-t-il été « de tous les arts, le plus important » (Lénine) ?

This article analyses and maps the links between caricature and animated film, as well as their development during the post-World War II era, in communist Eastern Europe. The article also deals with the specific nature of animation production under the conditions of political censorship and the utilisation of Aesopian language as an Eastern European phenomenon for outmanoeuvring censorship.

This chapter explores the relationship between ‘hardcore’ horror films, and the discursive context in which mainstream horror releases are being dubbed ‘extreme’. This chapter compares ‘mainstream’ and ‘hardcore’ horror with the aim of investigating what ‘extremity’ means. I will begin by outlining what ‘hardcore’ horror is, and how it differs from mainstream horror (both in terms of content and distribution). I will then dissect what ‘extremity’ means in this context, delineating problems with established critical discourses about ‘extreme’ horror. Print press reviewers focus on theatrically released horror films, ignoring microbudget direct-to-video horror. As such, their adjudications about ‘extremity’ in horror begin from a limited base that misrepresents the genre. Moreover, ‘extremity’ is not a universally shared value, yet it is predominantly presented as if referring to an objective, universally agreed-upon standard. Such judgements change over time. Moreover, in contrast to marketers’ uses of ‘extreme’, press critics predominantly use the term as a pejorative. Although academics have sought to defend and contextualise particular maligned films and directors, scholars have focused on a handful of infamous examples. As I will explain, academic publishers implicitly support that narrow focus. As such, the cumulative body of scholarly work on ‘extreme’ horror inadvertently replicates print press critics’ mischaracterisation of the genre. These discursive factors limit our collective understandings of ‘horror’, its ostensible ‘extremity’. and of ‘extremity’ qua concept. Given that the discourse of ‘extremity’ is so commonly employed when censuring representations that challenge established genre conventions, it is imperative that horror studies academics attend to peripheral hardcore horror texts, and seek to develop more robust conceptual understandings of extremity.

Se analizan en esta ponencia los elementos discursivos clave que modulan la identidad 'desviada' de los personajes principales, Bruno y Guy, en la época de los cincuenta en Estados Unidos relacionados con la traducción al español de la novela, la adaptación al cine de Hitchcock y su versión doblada al español. Se tienen en cuenta el papel de la censura sobre la homosexualidad tanto en la autora como en sus versiones.

Yaoi/BL Fandom Survey (only takes 10 mins to complete): https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

http://sainsbury-institute.org/news-events/legislating-manga-workshop/

This talk will explore the implications of the Prohibited Images of Children section of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 for Boys' Love and Yaoi in the UK. The British legislation will be set in context briefly with regard to the legal situation in North America, Australia, Japan and China. Anna is Chair of Qualitative Inquiry in the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds and is author of 'Boys’ Love manga for girls: Paedophilic, satirical, queer readings and English law' in Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (2015). Her online BL fandom survey can be found at https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

Σκοπός της παρούσας μελέτης είναι να μελετηθεί το φαινόμενο της λογοκρισίας στην τέχνη και να αναλυθούν οι περιπτώσεις λογοκρισίας στις εικαστικές τέχνες στη μεταπολεμική ελληνική τέχνη. Οι περιπτώσεις λογοκρισίας επιλέχθηκε να αναλυθούν ενταγμένες σε ένα γενικότερο διεθνοποιημένο πλαίσιο. Για το λόγο αυτό, διερευνήθηκαν οι όψεις, οι τύποι και οι κατηγορίες της λογοκρισίας που εμφανίζονται στην Ελλάδα και το εξωτερικό, ώστε να δημιουργηθεί ένα πλαίσιο ανάλυσης της λογοκρισίας στη διεθνή τέχνη αλλά και στις υπόλοιπες μορφές τέχνης στην Ελλάδα. Ως αποτέλεσμα το φαινόμενο της λογοκρισίας στην τέχνη, επιλέχθηκε να δοθεί συνθετικά, αξιοποιώντας την ελληνική και διεθνή εμπειρία. Τα περιστατικά λογοκρισίας στις εικαστικές τέχνες που αποτέλεσαν το αντικείμενο έρευνας, επιλέχθηκε να εξετασθούν θεματικά, δηλαδή με γνώμονα το κίνητρο που προκάλεσε τη λογοκρισία και κατηγοριοποιήθηκαν ως εξής: πολιτική λογοκρισία, ηθική λογοκρισία, θρησκευτική λογοκρισία, λογοκρισία εθνικών συμβόλων, οικολογική λογοκρισία, αισθητική λογοκρισία και φεμινιστική λογοκρισία.

En 1898 la escena de 18 segundos “El beso” de Edison, escandalizó a la sociedad puritana. Vista hoy en día, se puede considerar además de simple, completamente anti erótica, pero la visión en su momento ya puso las bases en ciertos sectores, de la amenaza a los valores tradicionales que representaba el cine en la sociedad de principios de siglo XX.

In the shadow of the transgressive heritage of Fellini's "La dolce vita", in 1960 "Rocco e i suoi fratelli” ("Rocco and His Brothers") provoked an institutional uproar, in unprecedented forms, in months of delicate political transition. The scandal involved the press, censorship, politics and even the magistracy. Thanks to new unpublished documents and a refining of its philological analysis, this new edition of the book (originally published in 2011) further develop its ideas about the production, the literary sources (particularly Giovanni Testori’s short stories), the reception, and the cultural context of Visconti’s most controversial, complex and admired film.

This paper reconstructs the history of the reception across the Italian Catholic world of the first sex education film ever screened in Italy, the documentary “Helga” (Erich F. Bender, 1967). Most Catholics were initially fearful and skeptical about the film and its pedagogical potential, and condemned in particular the decision by the national censorship board that the film was “suitable for all”. However, as the weeks went on, and while the film surprisingly topped the box office, their position became less hostile, and more and more nuanced, to the point that some Catholic teachers started testing “Helga” with teenage classes on sex education.

‘SILENCING CINEMA: FILM CENSORSHIP AROUND THE WORLD’ brings together the key issues and authors to examine instances of film censorship. Including essays by some of today's leading film historians, the book offers groundbreaking historical research on film censorship in major film production countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia/Soviet Union, India, China, and Nigeria, among others.
The contributors explore such innovative themes and topics as film censorship and authorship, genre, language, religion, audiences, political economy, international policy, and colonialism. This exciting collection is thoroughly unique in its broad geographical scope and its comprehensive look at film censorship.

The struggle between censors and their opponents has always been a never-ending war of attrition. It always will be. Violence and extortion have been used to conceal, and also to expose. The law is, and has been used to conceal and to expose. Publicity media of every kind is, and has been used to conceal and to expose. The induced apathy and inherent mental laziness of overall populations is proving the most potent tool for those who wish to conceal. Because concealment is so often malevolent rather than benevolent, the ultimate failure of institutions or even states due to malevolence is in a way the cost effective brake on malevolent concealment. Of course, by the time of failure, many lives will have been ruined.

The opulent colours and ornamentation, exotic characters and landscapes, as well as astonishing journeys and magic may resemble other European adaptations of Arabian Nights fairy tales. Yet remarkable technical and political innovations distinguish Lotte Reiniger's 1926 'Scherenschnitte' shadow animation film Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed. Engaging with various readings of Reiniger's evolving technical and narrative approaches, this article complicates unproblematized celebrations of the film's innovations as well as critiques of the film as Orientalist, arguing that both facets are in complex ways interdependent. The technical feats and orientalist tropes at once veil the progressive messaging and permit the audience to imagine a different world.