New developments in this controversial situation are in the bold brackets below:
Teat Beat of Sex, Signe Bauman’s widely acclaimed take on sex exclusively from a woman’s point of view, and Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People, directed by Kenneth Ti and Kin Hung have been censored by iTunes from their Sundance Film Festival on-line shorts program. [ NOTE: This is still true, but Sundance is in discussion with iTunes to try to change this situation]
Both animated films were screened at Sundance 2008 where they were invited to be part of Sundance Online which is a great opportunity for short filmmakers to get their films out to audiences and make a little money. In the middle of the festival the filmmakers were notified that their films would not be part of the package deal because i Tunes found Teat Beat of Sex too explicit and Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People is too political (read too anti-Bush).
Sundance Film Festival has expressed that they are very upset about the censorship, but that there is nothing that they can do. This was initially a package deal with iTunes, Netflix and Xbox but the two films cannot be downloaded from any of the three services. [ NOTE: It turns out that the two films were not online earlier with Netflix and Xbox due to technical glitches and not due to any censorship issues(?)]
I intend to let Apple/iTunes know how I feel about this kind of censorship. You can also contact them with your feedback at http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html [Sundance has written Signe to tell her that in their opinion, it is "harming" their relations with iTunes and their ability to get them to change their position]
Here are the links to Sundance Online to view the short films (now with the two animation shorts on Netflix and Xbox):http://www.netflix.com/sundance , http://www.itunes.com/sundance , http://www.xbox.com/sundance
