Britain has an official board, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), to review and censor movies.
It charges the film makers for the costs of censoring their movies, to the tune of £101.50 plys £7.09 per minute of film.
British film maker and journalist Charlie Lyne had a kickstarter to make a protest film, and when he totaled up the costs, he submitted a 10+ hour of film of paint drying:
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has determined that Charlie Lyne’s 10-hour Paint Drying contains “no material likely to offend or harm”, and has accordingly awarded it a “suitable for all” U certificate.
Nicely described by the BBFC as “a film showing paint drying on a wall”, Paint Drying is the result of a Kickstarter campaign aimed at highlighting the “prohibitively expensive” cost of presenting cinematic works for classification.
The BBFC charges a £101.50 submission fee and £7.09 per minute of film. However, it is obliged to sit through every single frame of material, so Lyne decided he’d make the censors work for their money.
He originally planned to raise £109 for a symbolic one-minute submission of paint drying, but ultimately attracted pledges of £5,936, financing an extended 607-minute submission to the BBFC.
It took 2 days for the BBFC to review the film.