[Frameworks] banned films?

[Chuck Kleinhans]

On Mar 29, 2014, at 1:28 PM, Andy Ditzler wrote:
>  My understanding is that L'Age D'Or was unavailable for decades because Bunuel's patron was scandalized by it, more than from any "ban." (The effect, of course, is the same.)

I don't know who this patron was, but in the 60s-70s there was a print  of the film in the US, but it could only be screened by paying a very hefty rental fee and having the owner come in person with the print.  The cost was so high, that the film was only rarely screened.



> 
> My understanding of Frank's Cocksucker Blues is that it was suppressed by the Stones themselves. Perhaps others on the list will know more about this. 

There was a dispute for sure.  Frank had unparalleled access and shot sex and needle drug use.  OF course the Stones could hire enough lawyers to stop anything.  The compromise was that Frank was allowed to screen it a few times a year, with himself present.  At least that's what they said when I saw it in Berkeley one summer.  Sell out crowd, of course.



> 
> The New York State Censorship Office's rejection of Deren/Hammid's The Private Life of a Cat (for a birth scene) was one of the reasons that Amos Vogel converted Cinema 16 to a private membership club (i.e., film society). With such a club, he no longer had to submit films to the censor board before screening. 

Wasn't the film originally designed for school kids?  The birth, of course, is of kittens.  Perhaps as two European born folks Hammid and Deren never thought that birth thing through the eyes of US Puritanism.  On the other hand, Deren stormed  out of Window Water Baby Moving as an invasion of a woman's privacy. 

Kind of funny though.  I can't believe any rural folks would object since they're much more likely to have witnessed  animal copulation, birth, death, and slaughter.  In fact, a lot of folks of the Baby Boom generation have told me that their parents thought breeding the family dog or cat was a useful part of acquainting children with birth. Kids were woken up or called home from school to see the Big Event.

Chuck Kleinhans