Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced that it will appeal the "R" rating that the MPAA’s ratings board has given to the company’s “A Film Unfinished,” a documentary that includes footage shot by Nazi propaganda filmmakers in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.
“This is too important of a historical document to ban from classrooms,” said Oscilloscope co-founder Adam Yauch, also a member of the rap group the Beastie Boys, in a statement released by the company. “I understand that the MPAA wants to protect children’s eyes from things that are too overwhelming, but they’ve really gone too far this time. It’s bulls—."
The film, from director Yael Hersonski, is structured around footage marked “Ghetto” that was found in East German archives after World War II. The footage was originally considered an accurate depiction of life in the ghetto, to which the Germans had exiled a large number of Jews, many of whom were later transported to concentration camps.
The discovery of an additional reel of footage showed that many of the scenes were staged by the Nazis to create a false impression that some Jews enjoyed luxuries.
The questioned footage details the brutal living conditions in the ghetto, and includes a sequence of male and female residents of the ghetto in a public bath. It includes male and female full-frontal nudity — though in a distinctly non-sexual context.
The MPAA said that the "R" rating was levied for “disturbing images of holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity."
Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor who serves as national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said, the film’s “depiction of the lengths to which the Nazis would go to dehumanize Jews is an important teaching tool, not only for its historic content, but for its relevance to today’s world.”
The appeal will take place Thursday. While MPAA ratings are made by a board consisting of parents of school-age children, the appeals board consists of representatives from the exhibition and distribution arms of the film industry.
“A Film Unfinished” premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award at that festival, along with additional awards at the Hot Docs Film Festival and the American Film Institute’s Silverdocs Film Festival.
