The Guardian, Bibi van der Zee, 29/3/2008

Picking on a film that makes the police look silly just makes them sillier

The guys at Schmovies are not altogether surprised that the police are being so energetic about stopping their film On the Verge being shown. Last week Sussex police intervened to stop the film being screened at Brighton's Duke of York cinema because the film (like almost all small independent films) wasn't certified.

It can't just be coincidence that, according to people who have seen it, On the Verge makes the police look "very, very silly".

After three years of confrontations between Sussex Police and smashEDO, the anti-arms campaigners featured in the film, there is little affection left between them. Schmovies is the sister organisation to Schnews, an independent weekly freesheet that has always taken a fairly, let's say, sceptical attitude to the police: their "Crap Arrest of the Week" column, which every week highlights a different fatuous arrest of an activist, probably doesn't make them the policeman's favourite read.

The Schnewsers are pretty chilled out about the whole thing - slightly impressed, even, that the police managed to come up with the licensing quibble - "we expected some kind of objection, but we hadn't thought of licensing; it's a good one".

But it's a worry for other independent filmmakers, and for the small cafes and social centres that screen the films. Will they have to get everything certified now? That will cost someone - possibly the filmmaker, possibly the taxpayer - money.

If the police were genuinely worried about uncertified films being shown, then that would be one thing. They could launch a national information campaign to warn us about the dangers of seeing a film without knowing if it's PG or 18. Just picking on one particular film - which happens to show them in a bad light - makes it all look incredibly suspect and stupid. Which was, presumably, what they were trying to avoid in the first place...?