Controversy Corner: Ken Park

By Erin Free

Film festivals are usually free from the prying, grabbing hands of the censor, with curators more often than not allowed to play whichever works they deem of interest to an adult audience of keen cineastes often well attuned to the more disturbing corners of the filmic experience. But when then Sydney Film Festival director, Gayle Lake, picked Ken Park – the latest effort from the notorious Larry Clark (Kids) – to screen at the event in 2003, she unknowingly opened up a big, squirming can of worms. In something of a first for a film festival, The Office Of Film And Literature Classification (OFLC) actively stepped in and refused to classify the movie, which features non-simulated sex acts in its grim, ugly depiction of adolescence and the predatory adults who often squeeze the life out of it.

Though The Sydney Film Festival appealed what was effectively a ban, NSW Attorney General Bob Debus claimed that he could not lift it, and Australia’s artistic community started to raise its voice, with many suggesting that the festival should screen the film regardless. “Not only would such a screening be illegal, but it could also affect the future status of the festival,” Gayle Lake said. Matters reached boiling point when a group of industry supporters calling itself Free Cinema (led by Margaret Pomeranz, one of Australia’s most respected and high profile critics) illegally screened the unclassified film at Sydney’s Balmain Town Hall to a 500-strong audience. Police intervened during the opening credits, however, and stopped the screening. The Office Of Film And Literature Classification has not classified the film since. “It is an explicit film, and it is a confronting film, but it’s a film that certainly deserves to be seen by an adult audience,” eminent critic, David Stratton, told ABC Radio. “It’s sad that we in this country today have got to a stage where adults can’t choose whether or not to see a film like this.”