Set for collision

Even before it opened at the 1996 London Film Festival, David Cronenberg's latest film Crash, based on the novel by JG Ballard, was subjected to vitriolic abuse in the right-wing tabloids and to outraged moralising by politicians, none of whom had seen it. Preempting a British Board of Film Classification ruling, Westminster City Council banned its screening throughout London's West End cinemas. Only on 18 March did the often over-cautious director of the board, James Ferman, defy general censure and give it a clean bill of health and an 18 certificate, saying that while ‘unusual and disturbing’, the film was neither illegal nor harmful. Author and film-maker discuss the renewed furore surrounding Crash 25 years after its first publication </jats:p