Artist Tracey Emin has withdrawn her first film as a director, Top Spot, from UK release as a protest against the decision of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to give it an 18 certificate. The movie will now go directly to BBC3, which commissioned it and will broadcast it uncut next month.
Emin says that the cert would prevent the film reaching its target audience: "I made this very personal film about teenage girls. I never in a million years thought they would not be able to see it."
A BBFC spokeswoman said, "After taking the advice of Deptartment of Health experts, we decided the two shots which depict a particular suicide technique were not appropriate for a 15 film." The board offered a 15 cert if Emin cut those shots, but she declined.
The executive producers of Top Spot include Michael Winterbottom and Andrew Eaton, who are no strangers to controversy, being the director and producer of the imminent 9 Songs.
2nd in trilogy goes to Hell
Danis Tanovic, who directed the Oscar-winning No Man's Land, is now filming Hell (L'Inferno), the second picture in the trilogy written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz with the late Krzysztof Kieslowski. Shooting in Paris, it deals with three sisters whose childhoods were marked by a family tragedy and how they eventually confront their pasts as adults.
Hell stars Emmanuelle Béart, Carole Bouquet, Jacques Perrin and Guillaume Canet. Tom Tykwer directed the first film in the trilogy, Heaven (2002), which starred Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. A director has yet to be signed for the third film, Purgatory.
Spaniards lead Euro noms
Two Spanish films, Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education and Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside, along with Fatih Akin's Head-On from Germany, lead the field in the nominations for this year's European Film Awards, to be presented in Barcelona on December 11th. All three have been nominated for Best Director and Screenplay, and also shortlisted for the principal award, Best European Film, along with Lukas Moodysson's A Hole In My Heart, Christophe Barratier's Les Choristes and Mike Leigh's Vera Drake.
The nominees for Best European Actress are Penelope Cruz (Don't Move), Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), Sarah Adler (Notre Musique), Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (5x2), Sibel Kekilli (Head-On) and Asi Levi (Avanim 2). On the shortlist for Best European Actor are Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside), Daniel Bruehl (The Edukators), Bruno Ganz (as Adolf Hitler in Downfall), Gerard Jugnot (Les Choristes), Bogdan Stupka (Our Own) and Birol Uenel (Head-On).
Wood's last cult crud
Necromania, the long-lost last film directed by Edward D. Wood, has been unearthed in a Los Angeles warehouse and gone on DVD release in the US via a pornography website. Widely dismissed as the worst director of all time for such no-budget 1950s movies as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda, Wood posthumously gained a cult following, and was affectionately played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's 1994 film, Ed Wood.
Described as "not for the faint-hearted", Necromania was shot in a few days in 1971 for about $7,000. It documents the sexual enlightenment of a young couple at the hands of a coven of witches.
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
