Bestiality Film’s Screening Halted After UCLA Protest

A screening of a film made by a UCLA student that depicts scenes of simulated bestiality was canceled Thursday after protesters attacked it as ethnically insensitive and sexist and Chancellor Charles E. Young condemned it as “offensive, tasteless and disgusting.”

The 16-minute film, “Animal Attraction,” was screened at UCLA on Wednesday as part of a weeklong festival devoted to works by students. At the request of university officials, the film maker, George Cunningham, agreed to cancel a second screening scheduled for Thursday.

Young issued his statement as about 60 people demonstrated on campus against “Animal Attraction,” which is set in a mythical Tijuana nightclub.

“I cannot conceive of circumstances where this film will ever be shown at UCLA again,” Young said, adding that the film was not censored because it is not legally pornographic.

Shot mainly in East Los Angeles, the 16-millimeter film is a mock television documentary about tourists flocking across the border to the Casa Hee-Haw, where a woman is to have sex on stage with a donkey. The woman, her parents and her boyfriend treat her “job” with matter-of-fact acceptance.

Although a real donkey appears in the film, a prop animal is used in the simulated sex scene.

Gloria Romero, assistant professor of women’s studies at Cal State San Diego, told the rally that she objected not just to the sex scene but also to “the laughter about poverty” and the depiction of the show’s star as an ignorant “slut.” The protest was organized by the Chicano Studies Research Center.

“This is a highly racist and sexist film,” Romero said. “It needs to be condemned.”

Romero said she has filed a battery complaint against an unidentified man who threw a glass of wine over her as she explained her outrage at a reception after Wednesday’s screening.

Agreeing that the film is “dreadfully sexist and racist,” film professor John Boehm was heckled by protesters as he explained that the school has an open policy allowing every student film maker one opportunity to show his or her project.

A disclaimer was shown before the screening warning the audience that they might find the film offensive.

Maria Cuevas, assistant director of the research center, said the protesters were not calling for censorship. She said that with more minority representation on the faculty, film makers would be more sensitive to community concerns. Three out of 13 faculty members of the Department of Film and Television belong to minority groups, Boehm said.

A self-described “equal opportunity satirist,” Cunningham, 28, said he intended the film as a “Saturday Night Live”-style satire of American attitudes toward the Third World “that we see basically as a place of tourism.” He said the Mexican characters were shown as stereotypes because that is how many Americans see them.

Reviewing “Animal Attraction” last month for The Times, Chris Willman anticipated that Latinos might find the film offensive but praised the film maker’s daring, saying “Cunningham takes brave digs at some less-than-easy targets, and may be a real comedy find.”

Cunningham said his film cost less than $9,000, almost all of which was raised privately. The school gives the film makers a few hundred dollars, UCLA officials said.

Maintaining that the outcry is reminiscent of last year’s protest against Martin Scorcese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which drew criticism even before it opened, Cunningham said: “You press little buttons, you get people very excited. They don’t see the whole thing in context.”