Gay Zombie Film Banned, Screened Anyway, Destroyed

Elizabeth Grunewald

The Pope of Chilitown
Oct 4, 2010
1,096
0
0
Gay Zombie Film Banned, Screened Anyway, Destroyed

LA Zombie, a Canadian zombie movie starring a French porn star, was the subject of police-mandated destruction in Australia.

In today's news of zombie-movie persecution: Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, entered his film LA Zombie into the Melbourne International Film Festival, hoping to share his graphic, sexualized zombie vision with the people of Australia. According to The New York Times, LA Zombie "stars a French porn star as a schizophrenic homeless man who believes he is a cannibalistic ghoul," and depicts homosexual sex, full-frontal male nudity, and necrophilia. (Having not seen the film, I can't speak to the veracity of that statement, but a Google image search yields some pretty graphic results.) The film was unfortunately rejected by Australia's Classification Board (the country's film reviewing body, run by the government), who deemed it unclassifiable; LA Zombie summarily pulled from the festival. Festival director Richard Wolstencroft took a stand against the decision, saying he believed the film "artistically significant," and held an underground screening of the film in July.

The Australian police must have been miffed by not having been invited to this summer's screening. This past week (a full four months later), the police raided Wolstencraft's home in hopes of perhaps destroying the festival director's copy, only to be thwarted by the fact that he had beat them to the punch. He did not specify why he'd destroyed it, after defending it so thoroughly; possible motives include amazingly having predicted this bizarre series of events, being paranoid, and taking a stand against the fact that this film is apparently so inflammatory that the man destroyed it before the police could get their hands on it.

Bruce LaBruce made a movie about a homeless, schizophrenic, necrophiliac, homosexual zombie starring a French porn star that someone destroyed before the Australian police could get it. You cannot make this stuff up.

Source: image [http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/screening-of-gay-zombie-film-leads-to-police-raid-in-australia/])

Permalink
 

Sneaky-Pie

New member
Sep 22, 2008
1,000
0
0
This is the first thing that came to my mind when reading about their reaction to the film.

 

Cowabungaa

New member
Feb 10, 2008
10,806
0
0
Thanks Australia, thanks for giving me more and more reasons not to go to that place. Police raids to destroy offensive materials, gee where I do I know that from... Oh! That's right:
I'm a lot more disgusted by their course of action than I am of the movie, and I already am pretty disgusted by that.
 

Sennz0r

New member
May 25, 2008
1,353
0
0
What was this director thinking? It's Australia we're talking about. You know, the country with the government who wants to censor the internet?

Shame I don't get to see it though... I mean no, gay zombie movie, what?
 
Aug 25, 2009
4,611
0
0
I hate to pull this card out so soon but there have been other governments in history who destroyed cultural works.

I may respect the Australian government's refusal to classify it, but you don't destroy culture, on any medium. If they had been burning books there would be Nazi comparisons flying all over the place.
 

Gigano

Whose Eyes Are Those Eyes?
Oct 15, 2009
2,281
0
0
How utterly pathetic of the Australian Government. From what's described the film sound like trash, but a public office actively censoring products not inciting harmful actions raise serious concerns about artistic freedom of expression (and just how the police choose to prioritize their presumably not unlimited resources).

For shame, Australia(n government)!
 

JWRosser

New member
Jul 4, 2006
1,366
0
0
Seems a bit pathetic. There are a lot worse films out there...like anything made by Asylum Films. Pah.
 

vrbtny

Elite Member
Sep 16, 2009
1,959
0
41
Elizabeth Grunewald said:
The Australian police must have been miffed by not having been invited to this summer's screening. This past week (a full four months later), the police raided Wolstencraft's home in hopes of destroying the festival director's copy, only to be thwarted by the fact that he had beat them to the punch.
Now this bit just sounds like a slow day in the office in the Aussie Police Department.

Cop #1 : "God I'm bored, can't we raid somewhere?

Cop #2 : "I dunno, I'll go search the archives (Searches archives) Well there's that gay zombie movie..... thing. It's a bit old, but who cares?"

Cop #1 : "Awesome. Let's destroy shit."
 

Necromancer1991

New member
Apr 9, 2010
805
0
0
A shock film get banned in Austrailia, OMG STOP THE PRESSES! But really though the movie sound more like pretentious garbage than anything else.
 

sunami88

New member
Jun 23, 2008
647
0
0
Well, there's my daily dose of fucking weird. I thought the headline said it all, but then I read the article...

And now I'm speechless...
 

ShakerSilver

Professional Procrastinator
Nov 13, 2009
885
0
0
I.... I have never felt so terrified, disgusted and offended all at the same time before in my life. I mean..... WHAT?!
 

thenumberthirteen

Unlucky for some
Dec 19, 2007
4,794
0
0
Did he really destroy it, or did the police just turn up and say "We're here to burn your film", and he he said "oh yeah, I already destroyed it".
 

starhaven

New member
Jan 24, 2010
406
0
0
the movie does sound pretty dam hard to classifiy but they should have just slaped a r18+ or a x rating on it the pussys 1 more reson to hate my goverment
 

AgDr_ODST

Cortana's guardian
Oct 22, 2009
9,317
0
0
I admit I'd never in a 100 years see that movie(and not even if you paid me) but still seeking it out and destroying it because its offensive....thats nazi-esque shit right there