AN ACCLAIMED film director whose work includes a ten-hour epic on watching paint dry is to show one of his movies in Harwich.

The showing of Fear Itself by independent film-maker Charlie Lyne is a rare showing of a movie that is unclassified by film censors.

Electric Palace Theatre will show the movie later this summer as part of a series of screenings across the country.

Tendring Council agreed to the showing to support the theatre, the arts and independent filmmaking.

Charlie Lyne specialises in arthouse horror films and is also well-known for his weekly column in the Guardian.

Fear Itself is put together from existing clips from movies and looks at the psychological effects of horror movies on audiences.

Mr Lyne applied to the council’s Licensing General Purposes Committee to show and classify the film.

Usually the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) classify films into an age rating, but councils do have the power to classify or re-classify a film. 

It rarely happens these days but was quite common in the past as when some councils banned films such as Clockwork Orange from being shown in their area.

Mr Lyne said BBFC classification would have cost around £900, making it too costly to show his film at a small independent cinema like the Electric Palace.

The 25-year-old told the Gazette he’s still planning the film’s release and he hasn’t any dates locked down yet.

“It’s going to be later in the summer hopefully. I’m hoping to screen the film as widely as possible across the UK so Harwich is one of several places I’m hoping to arrange a viewing,” he said.

Val Guglielmi, Chairman of the Licensing General Purposes Committee, said that classifying a film is not something the committee would do very often nowadays.

“In this instance we wanted to show our support for the arts locally and also support our local independent cinemas in Tendring by responding to Mr Lyne’s plea for help to show his film at the Electric Palace,” she said.

“We used the BBFC guidelines to rate the film and thought that an 18 rating would best reflect the material that some of the film clips portray. 

“Our overwhelming objective as a Committee is first and foremost to protect children and vulnerable persons and we believe that we have struck a reasonable balance in doing this while giving Mr Lyne the opportunity to show his film. 

“We hope that it will be a success for him and will be well supported by horror film aficionados at the Electric Palace,” she added.

Last year, Charlie Lyne won public support for a campaign against film censors charging movie makers to review and censor their work, something he says other artists do not face.

He released a ten hour film Paint Drying in protest, which was watched by film censors and given a general release U-certificate earlier this year.