In Film censors behaving like bullies, I wrote about my recent experience with the film censors over a film that People Like Us planned to screen during Indignation. I wrote to the minister as well. I have now received a response from his press secretary, to whom I replied. The matter is not yet resolved, but in the interim, I am putting up these three emails. Full essay.
Fat epidemic:
Copyright
Yawning Bread 
Well, at least now you know you can get it back for “re-export” if you are willing to undertake the endeavor in writing.
I guess it is the BFC’s way of ensuring that something so “objectionable” cannot exist in Singapore, even if it rests only in the hands of the person who made it. I wonder if you can “re-export” it to a friend overseas to be archived on youtube :).
I hope you’ll get a reasonable response about why the rules were not spelled out clearly to you *before* you submitted the film. If the MDA agrees to do at least the latter, you would have done the film-making community in Singapore a great service, especially newcomers to the community.
Very depressing. This is does not bode well for Singapore’s prospects of becoming any sort of media or creative centre.
I thought i went back to the future. The British colonial censors were probably more honest and liberal. It is shocking to find especially in the internet age of the amount of resources expanded by the state in policing the flow of such literature with that type of religious vigour.
YB has, as a perfectly law abiding citizen submitted his material for classification only to get such unexpectedly crude responses of confiscation by in an arbitrary and ambiguous way.
I have been waiting for Part 2 all this time. Has there not been further correspondence between you and MDA?