SMUT HOUNDS. Producer (ABC2, 2015)
It’s a story that made headlines: “Festival Film Banned!” In the late 1960s, the majority of films screened in Australia were censored in some way or another. DELETE the lovemaking. CUT the ‘Open Mouth Kissing’. REMOVE the fondling of the breast sequence. Deemed too ‘inappropriate’ and ‘morally corrupting’ for Australian eyes, these scenes were hacked from feature films and locked away in government archives. When young Sydney Film Festival director David Stratton attempted to program a Swedish film that the censors believed contained ACTUAL sex, a scandal erupted. In a mash-up of never-before-seen banned clippings, SMUT HOUNDS tells the story of how seventy-seven seconds of celluloid scandalised a government and transformed Australian cinema.
Director: Sari Braithwaite. DOP: Richard Kickbush. Archive: Sari Braithwaite & Lisa Savage. Editor: Florence Mathilde Holmes. Score: Munro Melano.
SMUT HOUNDS was produced with the assistance of Open Channel, through the Screen Australia 'Raw Nerve' initiative
Screenings
- BFI London Film Festival 2015
- Sydney Film Festival 2015
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2015
- Adelaide Film Festival 2015
- Antenna Documentary Film Festival 2015
- Cinefest OZ 2015
- ABC Australia
- QANTAS Inflight Entertainment