Actress Sacha Horler called censorship “the death of art”. Filmmaker Charlie Lyne obviously hoped it worked both ways when he submitted his film, Paint Drying, to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
The title says it all: Paint Drying is a 10 hour, 7 minute film of white paint drying on a brick wall.
Lyne feels that the standard £1000 submission fee (it cost him closer to £6000, which he raised on Kickstarter, because of the length) makes BBFC classification impractical for emerging filmmakers, but references laws that he believes define the process as nothing more than censorship.
“If the BBFC refuses to grant a certificate to a film because of its content, that’s it. The film cannot legally be shown in the UK. Filmmakers can seek permission from local councils to show the film without a certificate, but in practice this almost never works (there are 418 local councils in the UK and the vast majority have never overruled the BBFC).”
While some may find Lyne’s methods immature, they are undoubtedly well thought out. BBFC policy requires them to sit through a whole film, regardless of presumed content. Remember the sneaky penis splice in David Fincher’s Fight Club? The BBFC sure does (it censored the film in 1999), so a pair of reviewers sat down to watch Paint Drying over two days in mid-January.
They gave the film an ‘all ages’ rating.
Lyne had made his point, and received a lot of attention doing so. When he held an ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) interview on Reddit, it ranked higher than the thread for Scott Kelly, an astronaut spending a year in space, who just happened to be running an AMA at the same time. A day later, when the film’s classification was posted on the BBFC website, it got so much attention that the site crashed.
While it may not cause the same ripples through the industry as Margaret Pomeranz’s attempt to screen Ken Park in 2003, he hopes it will bring attention to a classification system that has failed to keep up with social evolution of the medium.
“Obviously my little protest isn’t going to singlehandedly eradicate film censorship in the UK, but I do think it can help combat one of the most powerful things that the BBFC has on its side: tradition.”
As for how the film ends? Well, as Lyne pointed out, “Would you ask Tolstoy how War & Peace ends?”
While you can’t see Paint Drying in its full, 2K glory just yet, you can watch the trailer below.