Censorship: The Evil Movie Video Explores The Power Of Horror.

Director Prano Bailey-Bond poses this question in his first feature film, Censor, set in the "evil video" era of the 1980s. During this time, low-budget horror films were released for live viewing on home video recorders.

The Bailey Bond film discusses how Enid (Niamh Algar), the film's censor, slowly breaks free after seeing an "evil" woman who reminds him of his sister's childhood disappearance. Enid tries to solve the mystery behind the film and its director and blurs the line between fiction and reality.

The Welsh director said his film "embodied the idea that we humans are so afraid of ourselves. That in some people's minds, we are only one step away from doing something terrible. Like just making the film viewable and its moral compass completely discarded." window. "

Talking about the "social and political hysteria" surrounding the video bastards, he said, "When this new technology, VHS, came along, there was an explosion in these horror films because these films could be delivered directly to our homes via video and so on.

"The lack of censorship for these films has fueled a public debate that this new era will threaten our social life," Bailey-Bond argues that new forms from technology often create a kind of cultural panic.

"Stupid"

"In the 1950s, there was a fear of what comics would do to children, and the same fear was with games and music. "If we look back to the 1980s, we can say it was ridiculous. 

The director added that he accepted that "talking about our relationship with social media is more complicated." But he also points out that he and his co-author Anthony Fletcher have classified censorship in the violence of miners' strikes and unemployment in England in the early 1980s.

"Video trash is an easy scapegoat. There are welfare cuts in the background. The youth center has closed, so what will the kids do? It leads to people with insufficient time and support.

"So if people do something bad, is it because? I find it very interesting that a horror movie can be blamed for it." Bailey-Bond added that a characteristic of horror films from this period was the frequent violence against female characters, which influenced their own film choices.

Women and horror

"I thought about writing the opening scene using a male character as a victim in a fictional 'crime,' but it didn't fit the timing, mostly women on screen and men behind the camera. Anthony and I, I think, wrote a female director for the film. the movie, but it's unrealistic - hardly any women make a movie like that." Halloween horror with Oscar potential

The current climate for female directors and the horror genre is much better, says Bailey-Bond.

Saint-Maud, a new British horror film starring Morfid Clark and directed by Rose Glass, has a record of 17 nominations for the British Independent Film Awards. Censors were also selected for this year's Sundance Film Festival in the US and London.