A guide to content notes on our website
For each film on our programme you will find the formal classification certificate. This is assigned by the Classification office or the Film and Video Labelling Body and is what you’re used to seeing for films – G, PG, M, R13/16/18, sometimes with a brief note such as “Coarse language”. This is the mandated legal system for film classification in New Zealand. For more information on this system see here – https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/classification-info/what-we-classify/films/
In 2022, we received feedback from members that there was content (in this case a scene of sexual assault) in some of our films that was not noted in the certificate, and that they would expect to have pre-warning of before coming to see a film.
In response to that feedback we added a content warning for some films in our 2023 programme. This noted certain types of content that featured in films but was not mentioned in the certificate. Content warnings were noted on our website, in our email newsletter and on the pre-screening slides on the screen in the theatre.
For 2024, we wish to provide some more information about this to share our thought process and how we go about this. We have also standardised and reduced the range of content we are providing warnings about. Please note there may be situations where members of the editorial subcommittee don’t get a chance to watch (or rewatch) the film prior to programming – so this is a “best-efforts” system and is not perfect.
We primarily rely on the IMDB parents guide section to highlight for us what content is in the films and this guides the content note that we use – this is of course informed by our knowledge of the film where appropriate.
For 2024, we’ve standardised our content warnings to include the following, when it features in the film but is not mentioned on the Certificate:
- Sexual assault
- Sexual assault theme
- Suicide
- Suicide theme
- Domestic violence
- Animal cruelty
We appreciate that there are other types of difficult content in films. If there are things you’d like to ensure you avoid, we recommend doing some research online, and the IMDB parents guide is a useful resource for this. To access this, search a film on IMDB and scroll down to under the large “Storyline” section and you will see “Parents guide” a few rows below.