The scale of the problem confronting the new film censors is demonstrated by a crop of films which swept through the Berlin Film Festival last week.
The films include scenes of child abuse, incest, lesbian sex, sado-masochism and nudity. Many proved popular with festival-goers and several received critical acclaim; all look set to trouble the British Board of Film Classification:
Fucking Amal: Swedish-Danish co-production about Amal, the most boring small town in Sweden, according to the teenagers who live there. The title's the likely trouble.
Urban Feel: Israeli competition entry about a bisexual marriage, ending with multiple partner sex sequence.
Between The Legs: Spanish competition entry starting with group therapy lesson for sex addicts and continuing with male lead hooked on telephone sex and female lead fond of nocturnal park excursions.
Better Than Chocolate: Canadian Lesbian comedy with copious sex scenes.
The War Zone: British star Tim Roth's first feature, a frank examination of incest and child abuse. One of the best films in the festival and highly praised.
eXistenZ: Canadian director David Cronenberg on virtual reality games, with copious shots of plugs inserted into stomachs, etc.
Romance: French examination of women's sexuality in which woman in sexless marriage seeks savage encounters elsewhere. Passed for 12-year-olds in France, but considered impossible for the UK.
The Loss Of Sexual Innocence: British director Mike Figgis on sex, love and death, with frank, nude sex scenes.
Britain won two Silver Bears at the Berlin Festival yesterday.
Stephen Frears won the Best Director award for the Anglo-American Western The Hi-Low Country and Tom Stoppard shared the Silver Bear for Outstanding Single Achievement with Marc Norman for the screenplay of Shakespeare In Love.
The Golden Bear, the Festival's top award, went to Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line.
Actor Tim Roth's controversial The War Zone, about incest and child abuse, was admired out of competition but Ben Hopkins' Simon Magus, the official British film in competition, apart from the American financed Shakespeare In Love, was booed.
