Censor for a Day report: Term 1, 2012
The Term 1, 2012 Censor for a Day event was held in Wellington and Nelson. In total 353 students and teachers from thirteen schools attended.
Students learnt about New zealand's censorship law
Students learnt what kinds of publication get classified, and the criteria used to decide what classification to give a film.
They watched the film Attack the Block
In the neighbourhood of Lambeth in South London, nurse Sam is mugged by a gang of British teenagers: Pest, Dennis, Jerome, Biggz and their leader Moses. However, something crashes from the sky into a nearby parked car.
The ‘something’ turns out to be an alien, the first of a species heading to Earth. As the aliens arrive, the gang take a stand to defend themselves and their neighbourhood against the invasion.
As they watched, students thought about how things such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, violence and offensive language were presented in the film.
students applied the classification criteria 
Students filled out a form similar to the form used by Classification Officers, and discussed how different things, such as horror and crime, were presented in the film. They also had to take into consideration the likely audience of the film, the dominant effect of the film, whether it had any merit, and how watching the film in a cinema might be different from watching at home on DVD.
The majority of students classified the film R16
77% thought that Attack the Block should be classified R16 due to the crime, violence and offensive language in the film. The Classification Office made the film R16 with the descriptive note 'violence, offensive language and drug use'.
Read the report on the Term 1 2012 Censor for a Day events (PDF, v9.0, 784kb)
A copy of the Classification Office's summary of reasons for the decision on the film Attack the Block is available upon request.
