Australian film censors have banned a film that contains real sex between two male actors less than a year after they allowed a documentary that contained actual depictions of bestiality to screen at festivals. I Want Your Love, by American filmmaker Travis Mathews had been scheduled to screen at LGBT film festivals around Australia this year but the Australian Classification Board decided to ban it instead.
The decision comes less than six months after the Classification Board decided to allow the film Donkey Love, a documentary about a Colombian folk tradition where men have sex with donkeys to prepare them for having sex with women. Donkey Love contained actual on screen sex between men and animals but was given permission to screen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival and Melbourne Underground Festival by the Classification Board. I Want Your Love tells the story of a 20-something gay artist who negotiates to have sex with his best friend before leaving Los Angeles to move back to his hometown in Ohio.
In 2010 the Classification Board banned the Bruce La Bruce gay zombie movie LA Zombie which contained scenes of simulated cannibalism during real sex, however the depictions of real sex in I Want Your Love are non-violent. The Melbourne Underground Film Festival defied the ban and screened LA Zombie anyway and was issued a fine after being raided by police.
Prior to that in 2003 the Classification Board banned the Larry Clark film Ken Park which contained a real threesome between two male and one female adult actors who’s characters were supposed to be teenagers. The ban on LA Zombie lead to a number of official complaints and accusations of anti-gay bias. Another Travis Mathews film, the short documentary In Their Room Berlin, was also refused permission to screen at last year’s Mardi Gras Film Festival.
Australian censors have approved feature films containing real heterosexual sex for an R rating in the past – meaning that they can be rented from video stores – while films deemed simply pornographic are illegal to sell but legal to own in most Australian states.
