KARACHI, Oct 21: The 21-year-old censorship code, in light of which the Central Board of Film Censor judges locally produce and import films, is too generalized and vague to be useful anymore.

Cinema industry veterans maintain that most guidelines are so abstract that they cover a multitude of sins. This, they argue, gives the censor board a lot of room to manoeuvre — to condone what may not be suitable for the audience and censor what may be an innocuous joke.

Official sources told Dawn that objectionable foreign movies were, at times, released by film distributors without the approval of the censor board. They contended that this explained why some English movies contained extremely explicit scenes.

They added that while the fourth and fifth clause of the censorship code disallowed immorality, obscenity and nudity, their interpretation depended on the discretion of the members who were sometimes strict and at other times lenient.

The film censor board consists of 19 members — five official members (government officials) and 14 non-official members.

The official members are: one representative of the Inter- Services Public Relations, a person nominated by the Sindh home secretary, the education secretary, the law secretary and the director of press information.

The non-official members are: the chairman or vice-chairman of the Pakistan Film Producers; Farhad Zaidi, former PTV managing director; Mehreen Jabbar, Abdul Karim Baloch, former PTV general manager; Qazi Obaidullah, chief executive officer of Adamjee Insurance; Abdul Hinan Mirza, former vice-president of Habib Bank; Haider Buksh Shaikh, former district and sessions judge; Ferzana Rehman, president of the Ladies Forum; Dilpit Arsanaweria, a representative of the minorities; Syed Kamal, veteran film actor; Shakil Ahmed Abbasi, registrar of the copyright department; Hameed Haroon, Pervez Samual, a retired colonel and Shazia Hasan Sardar, daughter of the late singing legend, Madame Noor Jehan.

The films censorship code also contains a clause about the titles of movies. The ninth clause of the code says: “...a film shall be regarded as unsuitable for public exhibition if, directly or indirectly, it presents indecent, obscene or profane titles or which directly or indirectly seek to focus upon or glorify notorious characters in society amounting to the commission of, or incitement to, an offence or which have the effect of conveying hatred or contempt for a certain section of the people on cultural or ethnic grounds.” A cinema owner said that under this rule, the censor board should not have allowed titles such as Mard Jeenay Nahin Daitey and Shikari Haseena.

Official sources told Dawn that while the Karachi censor board had the equipment to view video films, it had no apparatus to play cinema movies.