A WORD ABOUT GUESTS AT TFS SCREENINGS
We get complaints from time to time from members of TFS who would like to bring guests to our screenings, including some from those who would like to bring their children under 18 to the only shows left where they can see “family” films with some regularity.
It is a cardinal policy of Toronto Film Society that guests are not admitted to our screenings. This is why we ask you, in applying for membership, to specify the names of all applicants. The reason for the policy is this: As a club or society with every member identified, we do not come under the purview of the Theatres Act and its Censor Board. While we send to Mrs. Mary Brown a list of films to be shown each season, we receive from her an annual letter stating her understanding that our activities are outside her board’s jurisdiction, We have, therefore, been able to show in our International Series such films as Pretty Baby and Beau-Pere, both banned in Ontario. We could not do this if our audience were unidentifiable, one in which non-members were present. And this is the reason too, of course, why we cannot admit to membership people under 18.
Time like an ever-rolling stream may well eventually bear away Mary Brown, the Censor Board, and perhaps even the “community standards” of the great city of Brampton, but in the meantime we must live with the censors; and to admit non-members to our screenings would be to jeopardize our legal relationship with those censors.
Barry Hayne
President, Toronto Film Society
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