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Filmmaker Forces Censors To Watch 10-Hour Movie of Paint Drying (ibtimes.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: A British filmmaker has forced the people who decide how to censor films to watch a 10-hour movie of paint drying on a wall following a protest fundraising campaign. Charlie Lyne launched a Kickstarter to help raise the money needed to send his 'documentary' of a single shot of paint drying on a wall for consideration as a protest against the 'stronghold' the organisation has on the British film industry. The BBFC charge an initial fee of $144.88 to view a film and decide what certificate to give it, and then and additional $10.15 for each minute that the film lasts. The idea was the more money Lyne could raise via his fundraiser, the longer his paint-drying film could last. The campaign eventually nearly £8,500, meaning he was able to send in a 607 minute video which the examiners had to watch in its entirety.
"The BBFC confirmed it had awarded the movie a U certificate along with a note warning that the description of the film "may contain spoilers". It also read: "Paint Drying is a film showing paint drying on a wall. It contains no material likely to offend or harm.""
From the TFA. I thought the response was pretty good.
It's possible that subtle racism is at work here (this year and last year); however, over the last 20 years, black actors and actresses have won 12.5% of Oscars, which actually does match pretty closely to demographics (~13% of the US is black). Since 2000, 80 actors have been nominated for best actor, and 10 have been black. Again, this matches demographics closely.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the field of "Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations", 6.5% of workers are black (unfortunately, "actors" isn't split off by itself, as there aren't enough of them for the BLS to keep track separately). Since there are 20 actors nominated each year, you'd expect them to have 1.3 people nominated. Two years in a row of not having anyone nominated isn't that far off, and historically they're pretty much exactly tracking population demographics (which means that blacks, who are underrepresented in acting by population demographics, are actually slightly overrepresented in awards). If it happens again next year, then that might be evidence of racism, but so far it's not necessarily racism, although I'm not ruling it out.
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