Depraved? Modern viewers get chance to see for themselves

London

Depraved, shocking, perverted, disgusting, immoral - these are just some of the words applied to the films comprising the Barbican Centre's new season, Seduced: Sex and Censorship in the Cinema.

Of course, the very same movies have also attracted their share of admiring glances: modern classics such as Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, David Cronenberg's Crash and Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher are regularly praised as ground breaking, taboo-busting and breathtaking.

But whether they have been loved or reviled, all the films in the Seduced season fell foul of the British censor, otherwise known as the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Set up in 1912, the BBFC has banned a number of films in their entirety (it prefers the term 'rejected'), and cut or edited many more.

The series begins on Thursday with screenings of what one might call 'erotic talkies'. The earliest examples include Jean Harlow's electric performance in Red-Headed Woman, made in 1932 but deemed unfit for viewing until 1965, and Mae West seducing Cary Grant in She Done Him Wrong (cut by several minutes). Continuing with Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962, 'cut') and Nagisa Oshima's sex and death classic, Ai No Corrida (1976, 'rejected'), Seduced climaxes with Gasper Noe's Irreversible (2002) and Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999).

Breillat will also be on hand to discuss her film, while barrister Helena Kennedy will lead a debate on censorship entitled Pushing the Boundaries.