The Pretoria High Court Judge will rule today on whether or not the award winning Xhosa movie Inxeba can be legally classified as hardcore pornography.The movie centres on a sexual relationship between young men undergoing the Xhosa initiation ritual‚ it was met with extremely angry and sometimes even violent protests when it opened at cinemas earlier this year.
Counsel for the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) and the Man and Boy Foundation have stressed that their concern over the film was not driven by homophobia‚ but rather by the fact that the movie shows an initiation that is sacred to a particular culture.
There were certain groups of people who, after the film was released in February, held protest marches and even threatened to harm the cinema staff and cinema patrons in the Eastern Cape‚ causing at least two of the movie houses to cancel their screenings.
Earlier this year‚ the film's producers went to court to challenge a decision of the FPB's Appeal Tribunal to overturn the FPB's previous rating of Inxeba as 16LS and replace it with one of X18SNLVP, this would classify the film as hardcore pornography. This would mean that Inxeba could only be rented from an adult store. This pornographic rating was overturned by the High Court earlier this year‚ pending a court ruling on whether it was legally valid or not.
The film's creative team are arguing that while sex is suggested three times during the movie‚ it is not ever explicitly depicted‚ and therefore classifying the movie as pornography cannot be justified.
