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Masterpiece Special – Salman Rushdie (1996)

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A free and individual voice education content clip 2

Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

In this interview with Andrea Stretton, Salman Rushdie argues that writers are a considerable threat to authoritarian regimes. He thinks it’s because the writer works alone with pencil and paper and therefore cannot be controlled, unlike the worlds of theatre or film that are easier to censor.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

Here we see Salman Rushdie calmly putting his point of view. Elsewhere in this episode, he tells a compelling story to explain his views about censorship. He was able to intervene when the British Board of Censors tried to ban a film made in the Middle East about the fatwa pronounced against him by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. The film was badly made and full of obvious lies about Rushdie’s life and work. Thanks to the writer’s intervention, the film was allowed to be shown in the UK where it was dismissed as boring and irrelevant, instead of becoming banned and therefore gaining heightened interest.

This program was one of several Masterpiece Specials in which Andrea Stretton spoke with writers, actors and filmmakers about their work. Others in the series include Robyn Davidson, Judy Davis, Melvyn Bragg and Wole Soyinka. The programs were made with a minuscule budget and a plain set with two chairs and a simple backdrop, the interest lying in the quality of the interview with a great artist.

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