Morals body seeks lower [End of the Spear] film rating

KELLY ANDREW – The Dominion Post Saturday, 05 April 2008
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4464953a6479.html

A morals group is calling for a film’s rating to be lowered from R16 so that younger audiences can experience its Christian message.

End of the Spear tells the true story of a group of Christian missionaries speared to death by an Ecuadorian tribe in 1956. The wives and children of the murdered men moved in with the tribe to teach them about God.

An edited cinema version of the film has been rated M (with a violence warning) by the Film and Video Labelling Body and has been shown at Coehaven private theatre in Otaki, Queensgate Sky City in Lower Hutt and several other cinemas nationwide. However, a three-minute-longer version of the film available only on DVD has been rated R16 by the Office of Film and Literature Classification because of its violent content.

David Lane, of the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards, went before the Film and Literature Board of Review to argue the DVD’s rating should be lowered to M – recommended for a mature audience – so that anyone could see it, with a warning that it contained medium-level violence and depictions of tribal warfare.

There were no “significant differences” between the two versions of the film, and the classification office was “playing up” the violent scenes, he said.

The film had themes of forgiveness, peacemaking and redemption and should be seen by a wide audience, he said. The violence was “medium level” and the film did not need to be restricted.

“It’s a film that’s got major appeal for this [under-16] age group. We don’t believe the film has gratuitous violence at all – it’s put in its certain historical context.

“You see a spear being thrown but you don’t see blood spurting from wounds.”
Chief censor Bill Hastings said that, in Australia, the longer version of the film had been classified MA 15+ (restricted to people 15 and over unless accompanied by an adult), and the edited version was rated M.

He was reluctant to comment in detail on the case before the board of review issued its decision, but agreed it was unusual for the society to argue for a film’s rating to be lowered rather than raised.