Byline: Nick Miller, Europe Correspondent - London, Britain
A disgruntled filmmaker has succeeded in his quest to force Britain's film censorship board to sit through a 607-minute film of paint drying.
A pair of censors sat through the entire, almost featureless 10-hour epic before giving it a "U" certificate, which means "no material likely to offend or harm", a BBFC spokeswoman told Fairfax Media.
They finished watching the film, called Paint Drying, and agreed on the certificate on Tuesday.
In an online "Ask Me Anything" session on web forum Reddit the day before, filmmaker Charlie Lyne said he had begun the project as a "protest against censorship and mandatory classification".
Lyne revealed in the forum that "to my great shame, I have not watched the film in its entirety".
He says he is talking to a London cinema about showing the film.
Asked if the paint has dried by the end of the film, Lyne replied: "Would you ask Tolstoy how War and Peace ends?"
The BBFC spokeswoman said the board classified the film as it would any other submission. All films are examined by two examiners who write a report making a classification recommendation.
A film cannot be released in Britain without a BBFC certificate, and Lyne believed that amounted to censorship, as the cost of about £1000 ($2045) a film could be prohibitive for independent filmmakers. He was outraged by some of the body's decisions, he said.
He said a year ago he went to a BBFC open day in Soho, London and expected to see "quite a lot of conflict" between the film examiners and the filmmakers, but he was disappointed to find "nothing like that. Most of the filmmakers ... seemed totally resigned to the censorship imposed by the board".
"Obviously my little protest isn't going to singlehandedly eradicate film censorship in the UK, but I do think it can help combat one of the most powerful things that the BBFC has on its side: tradition.
"If this project encourages people to debate that status quo - whether they're with me or against me - I'll be happy."
Lyne crowd-funded £5963 to pay the necessary BBFC fees, with each extra £7.09 over £101.50 adding a minute to the film.
The BBFC spokeswoman said the board was "a non-profit organisation that works to protect children, from content which might raise harm risks and to empower the public, especially parents, to make informed viewing choices".