British Board of Film Classification
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| Formation | 1912 |
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| Type | NGO |
| Purpose | Film ratings, Television ratings |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
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Region served
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United Kingdom |
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President
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Patrick Swaffer |
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Chief Executive
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David Austin |
| Website | www.bbfc.co.uk |
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), previously the British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organization, founded by the film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited at cinemas and video works (such as television programmes, trailers, adverts, public Information/campaigning films, menus, bonus content etc.) released on physical media within the United Kingdom. It has a statutory requirement to classify videos, DVDs and, to a lesser extent, some video games under the Video Recordings Act 2010.
The BBFC was established in late 1912 as the British Board of Film Censors by members of the film industry, who would rather manage their own censorship than have national or local government do it for them. The immediate impetus for the Board's formation stemmed from the furore surrounding the release in the UK in October 1912 of the film From the Manger to the Cross, about the life of Jesus. The film, shown at the Queen's Hall, London, gained considerable publicity from a great outcry in the Daily Mail, which demanded: "Is nothing sacred to the film maker?", and waxed indignant about the profits for its American film producers. Although the clergy were invited to see it and found little to be affronted by, the controversy resulted in the voluntary creation of the BBFC, which began operating on 1 January 1913.
The Board's legal basis was the Cinematograph Act 1909, which required cinemas to have licences from local authorities. The Act was introduced for safety reasons after a number of nitrate film fires in unsuitable venues (fairgrounds and shops that had been hastily converted into cinemas) but the following year a court ruling determined that the criteria for granting or refusing a licence did not have to be restricted to issues of health and safety. Given that the law now allowed councils to grant or refuse licences to cinemas according to the content of the films they showed, the 1909 Act therefore enabled the introduction of censorship.
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