Abstract
For what March Hunnings and other authors writing about film censorship systems around the world inform us,2 the film policy of the small kingdom of Belgium was quite distinctive. Not only that there was no regulation in terms of import quotas, contingent laws, or other measures to protect local film production, but the country was also quite unique because it did not have a compulsory film censorship system. Film producers, distributors, or exhibitors were not obliged to show their movies to a censorship board but could distribute and screen them freely. In theory, this liberal film policy served as a gateway for Belgian audiences to consume unreservedly such controversial films that were considered to be politically dangerous or morally risqué.
In Belgium this has been the position from the very beginning: no censorship of films for adults has ever existed in any form. […] There is here a well-tested prototype for a completely liberal approach to the screen.
—Neville March Hunnings in Film Censors and the Law (1967)1
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Notes
March Hunnings, N. (1967) Film Censors and the Law. Liverpool: Allen & Unwin, pp. 394–395.
For instance, Phelps, G. (1975) Film Censorship. London: Letchwork, p. 242.
For a wider context, see Stevens, L. (2002) Strafrecht en seksualiteit. Antwerp: Intersentia.
The Kingdom of Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square km, and it consists of three parts: a French-speaking southern region (Wallonia), a densely populated, Dutch-speaking region in the northern part (Flanders), and the bilingual capital of Brussels. The Belgian population grew from 6.7 million at the beginning of the twentieth century to 10 million at the end of the century. Belgium now has a population of 11 million people.
McGuigan, J. (1996) Culture and the Public Sphere. London/New York: Routledge,p. 156.
Curry Jansen, S. (1988) Censorship: The Knot That Binds Power and Knowledge. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This chapter will rely upon three research projects. The part on film control in Belgium is based on the results from the research project: Forbidden Images: A longitudinal research project on the history of the Belgian Board of Film Classification (1920–2003) (project funded by the FWO/SRC-Flanders, 2003–2006). The oral history part is based on two projects: (1) “The Enlightened City”: Screen culture between ideology, economics and experience. A study of the social role of film exhibition and film consumption in Flanders (1895–2004) in interaction with modernity and urbanization (project funded by the FWO/SRC-Flanders, copromoters: Philippe Meers and Marnix Beyen, University of Antwerp, 2005–2008); (2) Gent Kinemastad. A multi-methodological research project on the history of film exhibition, programming and cinema-going in Ghent and its suburbs (1896–2010) as a case within a comparativeNew Cinema History perspective (project funded by the Ghent U Research Council BOF, 2009–2012).
See “Belgium,” pp. 45–46 in Green, J. and Karolides, N. J. (2005) Encyclopedia of Censorship. New York: Facts on File.
Hagwood, J. A. (1960) “Liberalism and constitutional developments,” pp. 190–192 in J. Bury (ed) The Cambridge Modern History: The Zenith of European Power 1830–70. London: CUP.
Royal Decree, July 13, 1908. See Convents, G. (2007) Ontstaan en vroege ontwikkeling van het Vlaamse bioscoopwezen (1905/1908–1914), p. 31 in D. Biltereyst and Ph. Meers (eds) De Verlichte Stad. Leuven: LannooCampus.
Depauw, L. and Biltereyst, D. (2005) De kruistocht tegen de slechte cinema. Over de aanloop en de start van de Belgische filmkeuring (1911–1929), Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis 8(1): 3–26.
On the USA, see Grieveson, L. (2004) Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 23.
Wets, P. (1919) La Guerre et l’Enfant. Mol: Ecole de Bienfaisance de l’Etat. Collette,A. (1993) Moralité et immoralité au cinéma. Liège: Université de Liège (MA thesis).
Plas, V. (1914) L’enfant et le Cinéma. Anderlecht: Cops, pp. 48–49.
Biltereyst, D. (2008) Will We Ever See Potemkin? The historical reception and censorship of S. M. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) in Belgium, 1926–1932, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2(1): 5–19.
Biltereyst, D. (2006) “Down with French vaudevilles!” The Catholic film movement’s resistance and boycott of French cinema in the 1930s, Studies in French Cinema, 6(1): 29–42.
A key target were film theaters specialized in (semi-) erotic or pornographic movies.
The film control law was voted in Parliament on September 1, 1920 and published in the Moniteur Belge/Belgisch Staatsblad on 18th of February as the Loi du 1er septembre 1920 interdisant l’entrée des salles de spectacle cinématographique aux mineurs âgés de moins de 16 ans (in French), or Wet waarbij aan minderjarigen beneden 16 jaar toegang tot de bioscoopzalen wordt ontzegd (in Dutch).
See Vandervelde’s internal circular “Voorschriften aan de Afgevaardigden,” Brussels May 24, 1921. Rijksarchief Beveren (RAB), EA DEAD 2001, document 1172.
The official French-language name of the Belgian board for film control was Commission du Contrôle des Films Cinématographiques. The September 1920 law translated this into Dutch as Commissie van Toezicht op de Bioscoopfilms, later changed into Toezichtscommissie der Kinemavertooningen. The most common Dutch-language name, however, was Filmkeuringscommissie. In this article we prefer to use an English translation (Belgian Board of Film Control, or BeBFC).
These data are based on a systematic coding of a major sample of the movies submitted to BeBFC. This longitudinal research was based on the analysis of the original minutes, located in the BeBFC’s archive. The Forbidden Images inventory database included data from more than 10,000 film titles. The analysis does not cover the period from April 1941 to September 1944, when the German occupiers stopped the BeBFC’s workings.
BeBFC Archive, Casablanca file, Procès-verbal November 27, 1945.
BeBFC, Casablanca file, Procès-verbal March 7, 1946.
See Biltereyst, D., Depauw, L. and Desmet, L. (2008) Forbidden Images A Longitudinal Research Project on the History of the Belgian Board of Film Classification (1920–2003). Gent: Academia Press.
For an analysis of crime and violence, see Depauw, L. (2009) Paniek in Context. Een interdisciplinair, multimethodisch onderzoek naar het publieke debat over geweld in film tijdens het Interbellum in België. Gent: Department of Communication Sciences (PhD thesis).
The last film being cut was Charles Gassot’s Méchant Garçon (1992, Bad Ronald). BeBFC Archive, Méchant Garçon file, Procès-verbal August 6, 1992.
BeBFC Archive, Saving Private Ryan file, Procès-verbal September 1, 1998.
Jottard, F. and Leclercq, Ch. (1990) Attention, les enfants regardent. Brussels: ReForm.
Biltereyst, D. and Depauw, L. (2006) Internationale diplomatie, film en de zaak Dawn. Over de historische receptie van en de diplomatieke problemen rond de film Dawn (1928) in België, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis/Revue Belge d’Histoire Contemporaine, 36(1–2): 127–155.
Trumpbour, J. (2002) Selling Hollywood to the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 223–225.
For an international comparison, see Dibbets, K. (2006) Het taboe van de Nederlandse filmcultuur: Neutraal in een verzuild land, Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis, 9(2): 46.
Flanders is the Dutch-speaking region in the northern part of Belgium. Finlander has a surface area of 13,522 square km, a population of 5.9 million and a population density of 434 inhabitants per square km.
See Biltereyst, D. (2007) The Roman Catholic Church and film exhibition in Belgium, 1926–1940, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 27(2): 193–214.
Other forces, which are largely under-researched, include the juridical and educational system.
Kuhn, A. (2002) An Everyday Magic. Cinema and Cultural Memory. London:I.B.Tauris, p. 6.
More information on the oral history part: Meers, Ph., Biltereyst, D. and Van de Vijver, L. (2010) Metropolitan vs rural cinemagoing in Flanders, 1925–1975, Screen, 5(3): 272–280.
In this and the following quote we don’t use the respondent’s full name, but use abbreviations. We also refer to the interviewee’s age and his/her gender (male, female).
See on this concept in relation to film censorship, Kuhn, A. (1988) Cinema, Censorship, and Sexuality, 1909–1925. London: Routledge.
Müller, B. (ed)(2004) Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Curry Jansen (1988) Censorship, p. 10.
De Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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© 2013 Daniel Biltereyst and Roel Vande Winkel
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Biltereyst, D. (2013). Film Censorship in a Liberal Free Market Democracy: Strategies of Film Control and Audiences’ Experiences of Censorship in Belgium. In: Biltereyst, D., Winkel, R.V. (eds) Silencing Cinema. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137061980_17
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