Controversial cinema to be celebrated in Birmingham event

Beginning in May, the MAC cinema will be hosting a series of screenings and special events focusing on some of the most controversial films and television programmes ever created in both the UK and across the globe, starting in the 1920s and running right up to the present day.

Some of these have been cut, some have been banned outright, but all have provoked debate and challenged attitudes.

The event begins on May 12 with a screening of Michael Cumming's Box of Brass Toast starring Matt Berry and Chris Morris with the director joining Birmingham audiences for the event.

The original broadcast was postponed for six months due to legal concerns, hoodwinked celebrities were outraged they had been fooled into spearheading a campaign against a drug that didn’t even exist, and then Channel 4 head Michael Grade insisted that a sequence featuring a musical based on the life of the Yorkshire Ripper be cut out completely.

The screening will begin with a sneak preview of Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes, followed by a Q&A session with Michael.

On May 14, audiences can take part in a Q&A session with Russell T Davies following a screening of Queer As Folk, starring Aiden Gillen and Charlie Hunnan.

Prompting outrage from self-proclaimed moral guardians, a beer company to pull sponsorship and joy from a community that finally saw their lives celebrated on screen rather than denigrated, Queer As Folk was a coming out party for complex gay characters who weren’t embarrassing stereotypes and had active sex lives.

Alongside rare public screenings of three episodes, Russell will be discussing the legacy of the series as well as the impact the show had at the time, which was broadcast when the UK Parliament was debating the age of consent for homosexual couples, eventually reduced to the age of 16.

Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 five act silent film Battleship Potemkin is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and it will be screened at Birmingham MAX on May 25.

The film tells the story of sailors on the titular battleship rising up against their superiors after being given rotten meat and inciting a civilian uprising, one which paved the way for the Russian Revolution.

Yet Battleship Potemkin is also one of the most censored films of all time. For years, countries around the globe refused to allow Eisenstein’s film to be screened for fear that it might spread communism, including right here in the UK, the BBFC labelling it ‘Bolshevik propaganda’ and keeping it banned until 1954. It’s even alleged that French customs burned copies of the film upon arrival in the country.

For this special screening, acclaimed pianist Jonny Best will be performing a live improvised score to accompany the film.

Virdinia will be screened on June 2 as part of the event. Luis Buñuel’s film is the irreverent vision of life as a beggar’s banquet focuses on novice nun Viridiana as she does her utmost to maintain her Catholic principles, whilst her lecherous uncle and a motley assemblage of paupers force her to confront the limits of her idealism.

Featuring intimations of sexual assault along with a scene where a group of profane beggars parody Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Viridiana sees Buñuel settling a score with the Catholic Church, largely for their support of the fascist dictator Franco, who made sure the film was banned in Spain.

The screening will be preceded by an introduction from University of Warwick lecturer and Spanish cinema aficionado José Arroyo, who hosts the Eavesdropping At The Movies podcast and has taught film studies across the globe, including Barcelona and Cuba.

Attendees to the venue on June 12 will be able to get behind the scenes of The British Board of Film Classification at the very heart of the censorship debate in the UK.

This behind the scenes look at the work of the BBFC details both the history of the British Board of Classification and how modern Classification Guidelines are interpreted when applying age ratings to films.

BBFC Education Officer Emily Fussell will discuss the legal and ethical considerations of BBFC Compliance Officers, and illustrate her talk with clips from feature films, trailers, DVD and digital works across the age ratings, as well as answer questions after the presentation.

Director Mick Ford will be in Birmingham on June 20 to present a Q&A session following a screening of his hit film Scum.

Alan Clarke’s original version of Scum, a brutal and bloody look at the failings of the British borstal system, was originally produced for the BBC as part of the Play For Today series in the mid-70s. It was so shocking that the BBC banned it for more than 15 years.

Undeterred, Clarke and writer Roy Minton decided to make it as a theatrical film instead, and the result prompted moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse to take Channel 4 to court when they eventually broadcast it in 1983.

The film sees a young offender named Carlin, played by Ray Winstone, kick, punch and stab his way to becoming the ‘daddy’ of a terrifying borstal full of similarly damaged young men, while a more intellectual denizen named Archer,played by Mick Ford, uses his wits to beat the system.

Clarke and Minto’s film features gang rape, racism, suicide and unflinching violence, but never gratuitously – it’s all in service of showing just how broken the young offenders’ system was in the 1970s.

The event ends on June 29 will a screening of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. or years, A Clockwork Orange was the cause célèbre of controversial cinema. The film’s depiction of nihilistic violence contributed to the inaccurate sense that Kubrick was determined to corrupt young minds, even though both the film and novel are clearly a satire about the conflict between the individual and the state, as Alex finds himself forcefully re-programmed by the government.

It’s a long-held misconception that the ban placed on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in the 1970s came from the UK government. In fact, it was Kubrick himself who banned his own film in the UK, tired of being blamed for copycat violence and the continued attention of protestors, who even sent the Kubrick family death threats. The ban was lifted once Kubrick passed away.

For more information and to buy tickets to these events, click here.