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Dive into the captivating world of film, television and media studies with Manchester Film & Media Studies. Our collection boasts over 200 books authored by leading luminaries in the field, and is accompanied by our esteemed journal, Film Studies.
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2025 Manchester Film and Media Studies
Beyond the BBFC offers a comprehensive exploration of local film censorship across Britain and Northern Ireland from cinema's early days to the rise of home video in the 1980s. By examining regional and local censorship practices, this study uncovers the varied systems and motivations behind the regulation of films in different areas, including Aberdeen, Bexhill, Belfast, and more. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, the book reveals how local councils and committees developed and enforced unique approaches to film scrutiny, ranging from independent censors to more formalized, committee-based systems.
The work provides a historical account of the different interventions that shaped censorship, exploring how these systems persisted or came to an end, and how their practices were influenced by local and national contexts. The book contextualizes local censorship within the larger framework of national bodies such as the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the Home Office, and regional authorities like the Greater London Council. It highlights the role of local governance in the broader debates surrounding film and cinema in the twentieth century.
This study not only sheds light on the diverse landscape of British film censorship but also provides fresh insights into how the local regulation of film influenced public perceptions of cinema, film culture, and social norms across time.
This chapter covers the 1950s, a decade bookended with significant pieces of legislation that impacted cinema; at the start, the 1950 Wheare report, which drew on the data gathered at the end of the 1940s and which subsequently led to increased regulations for children and cinema, and at the end, the 1959 Cinemograph Act and the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, both of which were to have significant impacts upon both film content and on the cinema space. This was a period of significant change in Britain; not only was the uniformity of purpose and collectivist and patriotic spirit dispensed with in the post-war era, but the cinematic audience which had been the mainstay of culture in the period began to drift away. The primary concern of the period was juvenile delinquency, and the BBFC were extremely anxious about films containing teen violence and frequently requested cuts in films which they feared would affect impressionable teenagers. These issues were also significant for local censors, who sought to control both teenage films and teenage behaviour.
As many local tastemakers discovered, controlling film is an impossible task, yet across the twentieth century substantial efforts persisted to ensure that local viewers were not simply subject to decisions made elsewhere. Local film censorship is far from straightforward, and almost entirely idiosyncratic. While some local authorities were happy to follow the lead of the BBFC and accept their decisions on a range of films – particularly in periods of relative calm and stability – the desire to have the option of making local decisions is the fundamental issue to emerge across this work. It is not simply that local councils wished to make local decisions, but that they wanted the opportunity to do so. Any threat to this legally given power was met with serious challenges, voiced from both the smallest divisions and the largest metropolitan councils.
This chapter covers local licensing authority concerns from the start of the 1930s to the rumblings of war in 1938, which range from the safety of the cinema space, children, and who was most appropriate to act as a local censor. Anxieties about propaganda films, applying the Home Office model conditions, what to do about sound films, and managing inflammatory film stock are also considered. Careful exploration of material from across the UK – including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – indicates that in this period the BBFC did not (as was widely assumed) consolidate its power, but rather there were a range of challenges to its authority, including government initiatives and reinvigorated local censorship committees. This chapter will show the wide variety of ad hoc systems of censorship which persisted and how more formal interventions, such as amended or additional model conditions issued by licensing authorities were also in operation, adding further complexity to the censorship landscape.
The introduction sets out the key aims and objectives of the book, specifically to focus on local film censorship, shifting attention from national to local censors, identifying and giving voice to these guardians of public morality operating at local level. It maps the ebb and flow of local censorship, the specific legal, political and cultural processes at work in the censoring or classifying of film at local level and the debates which emerge between local stakeholders; cinema-owners, councillors, religious and morality groups, local activists and audience members. It maps early discussions around local involvement in film censorship and indicates what work is within the scope of this volume and what is beyond. It will highlight the key ideas that have shaped the book, notably ideas about regional and local discourse, power and taboo, as well as a desire to move beyond a singular approach to film censorship and consider how and why decisions on film and cinema were being made at local level.
This chapter explores one of the most discussed historical decades in British popular culture, the ‘swinging sixties’. Key filmic movements and developments in these years include films which address youth culture, more sexually permissive material and films of the New Wave. Despite their popularity and critical acclaim, the relative absence of New Wave films in records of local censorship is telling, suggesting that the careful vetting of these films by the BBFC ensured that by the time they reached local audiences, rough edges had been smoothed away and concerns about language, sexual content and violence had all been resolved in discussions with writers, producers and distributors. What emerges locally are concerns about more adult content, the loosening of cultural standards around depictions of morality, and anxieties about language. This chapter maps responses to Ulysses and how this art film fared across the UK.
This chapter focuses on the period from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s. In doing so it looks both backwards though the gathering of data for the Williams committee from a range of different national and local stakeholders, and forwards to the new decade, which would be shaped by new technologies. For some local committees, business as usual continued, while for others, notably in Cornwall, long-established systems of censorship and oversight started to crumble. As always, the press was a major influence in relaying these changes taking place and drawing attention to existing regional anomalies. This was exacerbated in this period with increasing attention being given to the discrepancy between what can be shown in the cinema and what can be accessed in the home, and how the laws governing the kinds of content being shown rested on interpretations of ‘decency’, ‘obscenity’ and ‘pornography’.
While the liberalising trends of the 1960s had seen the removal of censorship for British theatre performances, the early 1970s were characterised by increased pressure-group action against film and the surge of the religious and political right. This difficult and contradictory climate, with its slew of complicated and contentious films, made for a complex period to be negotiated. This chapter addresses all of these issues through local decision-making, and ends in 1976, with the announcement of a commission to consider obscenity and film censorship led by Professor Bernard Williams, with a specific brief to review the system of film censorship currently in place in England and Wales.
This chapter explores the earliest days of cinema and regulation of the film form. In these years, the space and apparatus of cinema exhibition was formalised, production methods were standardised and foundations were laid for the relationship between industry and state. The implementation of the 1909 Cinematograph Act ensured that local oversight and decision making was fundamental to cinema from the beginning and in so doing, ensured that the power to censor was both a local privilege and responsibility. Without the 1909 Act and its provisions about local licensing, there would have been no possibility for local tastemakers to have any say in what was screened in cinemas. Material from across the UK is presented and examined here to indicate how different regions and areas were applying their ideas of what could and should be censored. It also highlights how the Home Office and later the BBFC situated themselves within this evolving landscape.
As shown in Chapter 1, the varied mechanisms that evolved to police the cinema space in the earliest years of the film medium created a smorgasbord of local administrative systems. The 1920s would see the consolidation of BBFC powers with the tacit support of the Home Office, but are also notable for the flexing of muscles by local authorities reluctant to cede any of their own powers to the London-based organisation. This period also saw the creation of the new state of Northern Ireland and identified increased divergence between English cinema legislation and Scottish. These issues are all explored within the chapter, using a broad range of archival materials from across the UK to identify precisely who was censoring what in this decade.