Dhaka: Under a new law, filmmakers, actors and exhibitors in Bangladesh can be jailed for up to three years if their films are found to contain "obscene, nude or vulgar scenes", a government minister said on Wednesday.
The Censorship of Films (Amendment) Bill 2006 passed late on Tuesday in the parliament of Muslim-majority Bangladesh will also allow the authorities to confiscate films, Information Minister Shamsul Islam said.
Under the existing law, enacted in 1963, the maximum punishment for being involved in the production of an obscene or pornographic film is three months. Loopholes, however, have allowed filmmakers to evade jail.
"Objectionable films have been generating adverse effects on the youths and destroying the social values," the minister told the parliament before the bill was passed with an overwhelming majority, state-run BSS agency reported.
The film censor board, which decides whether a film is eligible for exhibition in the country's 1,000 or more theatres, said the new law was essential to "cleanse obscenity" from the film industry.
"By using this law, we can now take action against those - including filmmakers, actors, producers and theatres - involved in obscene, nude and vulgar filmmaking", film censor board vice chairman Abu Abdullah said.
"A section of these people have almost destroyed our rich film tradition, which dates back to the 1950s. This law aims at reviving that tradition and in no way it will curb the independence of good filmmakers or actors," he added.
The government has banned nearly 70 films and shut down more than 40 theatres in the past 18 months as part of a drive to clean up the country's movie industry, popularly known as "Dhaliwood".
Inspectors have seized films containing bathing scenes, rapes and other sexually explicit clips sometimes taken from foreign films and edited into Bangladeshi-made films.
Films containing scenes in which characters dance close together have also been seized, the censor board said.
The Dhaka-based Bengali film industry churns out more than 100 low-budget movies a year at an average cost of 6.5 million taka (100,000 dollars) each.
Authorities last year filed a case against a leading actor for performing in vulgar scenes in a film.
Under pressure from the government, the industry also temporarily expelled three artists from the Film Actors' Association. One, Danny Raj, was expelled for repeatedly appearing in rape scenes.
Award-winning director Chasi Nazrul Islam welcomed the law and said it would encourage quality filmmakers to return to the studio.
"Presently, because most of the films are now vulgar or X-rated, the quality filmmakers don't get a level playing field for their films. Hopefully, the law will bring sanity back to the film industry," he said.
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