Itâs a story that made headlines: âFestival Film Banned!â In the late 1960s, the majority of films screened in Australia were censored in some way or another. DELETE the lovemaking. CUT the âOpen Mouth Kissingâ. REMOVE the fondling of the breast sequence. Deemed too âinappropriateâ and âmorally corruptingâ for Australian eyes, these scenes were hacked from feature films and locked away in government archives. When young Sydney Film Festival director David Stratton attempted to program a Swedish film that the censors believed contained ACTUAL sex, a scandal erupted. In a mash-up of never-before-seen banned clippings, SMUT HOUNDS tells the story of how seventy-seven seconds of celluloid scandalised a government and transformed Australian cinema.
