{"id":352,"date":"2020-06-03T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T14:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/?p=352"},"modified":"2022-01-15T10:08:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T15:08:40","slug":"an-interview-with-jac-avila-on-the-maleficarum-censorship-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/2020\/06\/03\/an-interview-with-jac-avila-on-the-maleficarum-censorship-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Jac Avila on the Maleficarum-Censorship-Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I go on re building our VermeerWorks site, I have the pleasure of visiting the past. My most recent post deals with our best seller of all time, Maleficarum<\/strong>, and more specifically with an interview Jac had with Mike Haberfelner<\/strong> at (re)Search My Trash, published in July of 2012<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Interview with Jac Avila on the Maleficarum-Censorship-Debate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maleficarum0019.jpg\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Maleficarum<\/span>\u00a0has recently become the centerpiece of a censorship controversy. How did this start actually?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started with a letter. We released the film in October 2011, on the 31st to coincide with Halloween. It was our intention to have a premiere at the\u00a0Cinemateca<\/strong>, a place that was open to our movies in the recent past, but we couldn\u2019t get that date. Between October and February of this year we held discussions, conversations, negotiations to finally have a theatrical release date there. We finally agreed to have it sometime in March or April and gave them the film for evaluation; I was assuming that they wanted to see if the film held technically, and to rate it. The people at the\u00a0Cinemateca<\/strong>\u00a0held a preview screening of\u00a0Martyr<\/strong>\u00a0before its formal release, but they didn\u2019t do that with our other films:\u00a0Sirwi\u00f1akuy<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Nocturnia<\/strong>. All three films were shown,\u00a0Nocturnia<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Martyr<\/strong>\u00a0were not very successful while\u00a0Sirwi\u00f1akuy<\/strong>\u00a0ran for 5 months.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"MaleficarumMakingOf_7478-1024x683.jpg\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I was waiting for a letter with a date for the screening. Instead I got a letter saying that the\u201ccommission of evaluation\u201d decided not to show the film because of its \u201cexplicit language\u201d which I read as censorship.\u00a0Martyr<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Sirwi\u00f1akuy<\/strong>\u00a0were just as explicit and were shown.\u00a0LA Zombie<\/strong>, banned in Australia because of its extreme explicit content, was shown at the\u00a0Cinemateca<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, why was\u00a0Maleficarum\u00a0censored?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote an open letter to the director of the\u00a0Cinemateca<\/strong>, a newspaper picked it up and all hell broke loose. Not long after the letter one of our people had a chance encounter with the programmer at one of the multiplexes here. She told him about\u00a0Maleficarum<\/strong>\u00a0and he said simply \u201cwe\u2019ll show it, bring it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she told me the great news I asked Beto to contact the other multiplex to offer them the film as well and they also agreed to show it. Suddenly, the \u201cforbidden film\u201d was opening nationally and in big commercial houses.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We submitted the film to the people who do the rating of films here and they came up with R (18 years and older). So, the arguments that the\u00a0Cinemateca<\/strong>\u00a0had were deflated with this new development. The papers picked it up too. The issue was no longer the film, but censorship.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"MaleficarumMakingOf_6821.jpg\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Read the complete interview HERE
http:\/\/vermeerworks.com\/home\/2020\/0…c-avila-on-the-maleficarum-censorship-debate\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I go on re building our VermeerWorks site, I have the pleasure of visiting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redfeline.com\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}