8
-
Film Censorship.(Amendment) Bill 1995
Following is the speech by the Secretary for Recreation and Culture, Mr James So, in moving the second reading of the Film Censorship (Amendment) Bill 1995 in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
I move the second reading of the Film Censorship (Amendment) Bill 1995.
The object of the Bill is to give effect to the policy changes arising from the public opinion survey conducted by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) in 1994, as well as to make minor amendments to the Film Censorship Ordinance to improve its operation.
In order to gauge the prevailing standards of morality and propriety of the public so that the film censorship standards and film classification system adopted by TELA can keep pace with changes in social attitudes, TELA conducts a public opinion survey once every two years. The latest such survey was completed in early 1994.
Let me briefly outline the main findings of the 1994 survey. First of all, there is strong support for TELA to continue its role as the film censorship authority. We are also heartened to learn that the film censorship standards adopted by TELA resemble closely those held by the majority of respondents. In response to the public wish for clearer standards governing the depiction of triads, imitable criminal behaviour and perverted sexual behaviour in films, additional film censorship guidelines covering these matters have been formulated and will be gazetted on 27 January.
The results of the survey as a whole demonstrate general public support for the existing three-tier classification system and standards, and I wish to emphasise here that we have no intention of changing this three-tier system. All our new measures will be incorporated within this three-tier framework.
However, there are two important issues arising from the survey which need to be addressed by legislative amendments. Firstly, there is a clear and strong support for imposing more stringent control on the public display of Category III film posters in view of the public nuisance they caused. More than 70 per cent of the respondents wished to see posters for Category III films being subject to censorship, as oppose to the present arrangement whereby film posters are regulated under the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance through a voluntary submission system. Secondly, the findings indicated that the existing Category II classification embraced a very broad range of films. A refinement of this classification into two sub-categories would help provide more information to the public. in particular parents, to choose films for their children or for themselves.