The Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) is the government agency in New Zealand that is responsible for censorship of all films, videos, publications, and some video games in New Zealand. It was created by the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 (FVPC Act). The head of the OFLC is called the Chief Censor, maintaining a title that has described the government officer in charge of censorship in New Zealand since 1916.

The FVPC Act gives the OFLC jurisdiction to classify films, videos, DVDs, computer games with restricted content, books, sound recordings, pictures, newspapers, photographs, any print or writing , any paper or other thing that has images or words on it (including apparel, playing cards and billboards), and electronic digital image, text and sound files. Only computer games with restricted content, and all films, videos, and DVDs, must carry a label before being offered for supply or exhibited to the public.

The FVPC Act gives the OFLC the power to classify publications into three categories: unrestricted, restricted, and objectionable or banned. Unrestricted films are assigned a green or yellow rating label. Restricted films are assigned a red classification label. The common labels in each category are as follows:

The OFLC classifies material based on whether it is likely to be harmful or injurious to the public good . Specifically (from the FVPC Act): a publication is objectionable if it describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good.

Under the FVPC Act, the material that promotes, supports, or tends to promote or support the following is banned:

=List of Chief Censors=

*William Joliffe 1916-1927 *W H Tanner 1927-1937 *W A von Keisenberg 1938-1949 *Gordon Mirams 1949-1959 *Douglas McIntosh 1960-1976 *Bernard Tunnicliffe 1977-1983 *Arthur Everard 1983-1990 *Jane Wrightson 1991-1993 *Kathryn Paterson 1994-1998 *Bill Hastings 1999-

=Criticism=

The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards has repeatedly critisised the OFLC for not banning films such as Baise-moi , Irréversible , Takashi Miike s Bizita Q and Gojitmal which it classes as highly pornography and violent. It also alleges that the agency has a policy of banning or restricting Christianity films which attack homosexuality lifestyles. In fact, the OFLC cannot, by law, ban expressions of opinion and has never done so. The Society also criticised the OFLC for giving an R16 classification to Mel Gibson s film, The Passion of the Christ . This was lowered to R15 by the Film and Literature Board of Review in an appeal brought by the film s distributor, Hoyts. The Society is opposed to sexual promiscuity and often its criticism of the OFLC refers to the fact the Chief Censor, Bill Hastings, is gay. The Society has alleged that Mr Hastings is a participant in a gay agenda aimed at promoting homsexuality and promiscuity through giving liberal classifications to films that it believes should be banned.

=External links=