Indonesian film producers said yesterday they had withdrawn a horror-comedy movie about a menstruating ghost from cinemas because of threats from hardline Muslims.
“We did this because the reaction to the film is outrageous. The situation is still tense,” K2K production house manager Evelin Hutagaol told reporters.
Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan (The Menstruating Ghost of Puncak) was screened to a selected audience in Jakarta earlier this week and was due for general release on Thursday.
PHOTO: AFP
CUTS
The producers said they made significant cuts to the film before it was approved by the mainly Muslim country’s censorship board, including most of the sex scenes.
But uncensored clips on YouTube have caught the attention of Muslim clerics and radical youth groups, who appear not to understand that the edited version is different.
Habib Salim Alattas of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a Muslim vigilante group that has ordered its members to attack cinemas showing the film, said he had only seen clips on the Internet.
“We don’t want the movie to be viewed by Indonesians because it contains illicit and pornographic scenes,” the FPI chairman said. “If theaters are still screening the film, then the FPI will raid those theatres. The film damages our morals. Do we want our country to be made stupid by watching this film?”
K2K spokesman Yan Wijaya said the producers had arranged a meeting between the censors and the FPI so the vigilantes could see the edited version for themselves.
ABOVE THE LAW
“We’re still arranging the date. We have to wait as this mass organization [the FPI] is more powerful than our law,” he said.
The Indonesian Ulema Council, the country’s highest Islamic body, has urged Muslims to boycott the film but has stopped short of issuing a fatwa, or religious edict, on the matter.
Muslim leaders in September condemned plans for Japanese porn star Maria Ozawa, popularly known as Miyabi, to visit the country to play herself in a comedy movie called Menculik Miyabi (Kidnapping Miyabi).
The actress consequently “postponed” her trip.
In December, Australian movie Balibo was banned because it depicts the alleged murder of five Australian-based journalists by invading Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1975. Indonesia says the men died in crossfire.
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