SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.
BEHIND THE SONG YOU LOVE, IS A STORY YOU WILL NEVER FORGET
AMAZING GRACE, the story of William Wilberforce (1759 – 1833) was released in New Zealand cinemas on July 19, 2007. Much anticipation and excitement within the Christian community surrounded the release of this remarkable film. It has received glowing reviews (see below).
AMAZING GRACE tells the stories of two very important Christian icons, John Newton and William Wilberforce.
The Deputy Chief Censor. Ms Nicola McCully, whose statutory position expired on the 18th of September 2005, and yet remains on in her job, confirmed in a Sunday Star Times interview (13/08/06), that 80% of her time and that of the 16 censors in the Classification Unit, is devoted to the careful examination, classification and registration of DVDs and videos featurng sexually explicit adult material (hardcore porn sleaze). McCully who recieves a salary package of between $150,000 and $160,000 joined the team at the Classification Office in 1994 after leaving her first ever full-time job as a primary school teacher aide. Her boss, Chief Censor Bill Hastings, who heads the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and whose statutory position expired in mid-October 2006; receives a salary package of between $190,000 and $200,000. Precisely 82.21% of the combined salaries of these two Executive members funds their respective roles in the three-stage classification process of largely hardcore pornographic publications. In 2004/05 this amounted to $271,293 and in 2005/06 the contribution was $287,735, (remuneration costs in achieving Output 1 – defined as the examination, classification and registration of all publications dealt with in one financial year).
The film “Baise-Moi” came to be classified prior to its mainstream cinema release in NZ by a route which suggests a “curious case of censorship collusion” involving the importer/ ‘distributor’, Chief Censor Mr Bill Hastings and the CEO of the FVLB Mr Bill Hood. This curious case of apparent collusion involving a NZ film distributor and the heads of two supposedly independent statutory censorship authorities – Mr Bill Hastings and Mr Bill Hood – raises serious questions about the robustness and independence of our NZ censorship system.