From early animation to foreign-language gems via all-time classics, a range of movies to whet budding cinematic appetitesWhat is a children´s film? Is it a film aimed specifically at younger viewers, tailor-made to cater to their growing needs? Maybe it´s a film about childhood, a coming-of-age story that resonates with a wide range of viewers, young and old alike. Or perhaps it´s simply any film that a child could watch, anything that isn´t restricted by its nature to adult-only audiences.When I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, there were two movie classifications that excluded younger viewers: the AA category, introduced in 1970, for which you had to be at least 14 years old; and X-certificate movies, which were restricted to over-16s or (after 1970) over-18s. Films that fell under these prohibitive categories included everything from the David Essex/Ringo Starr Brit-pop romp That´ll Be the Day to the violent Sam Peckinpah shocker Straw Dogs via such innocuous fare as Blazing Saddles, American Graffiti and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. All of these were out of bounds in my preteen years. Yet there were plenty more strange and wonderful films that fell into the U or A certificate categories, making them available to anyone (or at least anyone over the age of five), sometimes under adult supervision, more often not... Continue reading...
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