SECURITY guards have been brought in this weekend to frisk cinemagoers wanting to watch a film about Britain's inner city gangs.
The unprecedented move was the only way one cinema chain, Showcase, would allow 1 Day to be screened. Showcase has made the film's distributor pay the costs of the security.
The £700,000 movie was given a 15 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification because although there is violence, bad language and drug-taking, it is not thought to be extreme.
As a film, 1 Day is as much a hip-hop musical as a gang movie. However, it has become a cause célèbre because a community police officer last week visited two cinemas in Birmingham, warning them not to show the film, of which he had seen only a trailer. His visit, in uniform, was, claim West Midlands police, done on a personal basis.
The cinemas believed he was acting officially and decided not to show the film, directed by Penny Woolcock, best known for her TV version of the opera The Death of Klinghoffer.
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The message that 1 Day might provoke violence then spread throughout the West Midlands. Cinema chains throughout the region have now decided to withdraw the film. The Showcase chain will show the film on its other screens in Britain, but with extra security.
Woolcock, who regards the action as "tantamount to police censorship", has complained to Sion Simon, the films minister. Simon has this weekend raised the issue with the police.