Silver-celluloid

Every state, province and country has a cinema rating system. This system is usually based around controlling the lower age limit of the audience and monitoring films so that they remain appropriate. The ratings system in most territories is self-regulatory and there is usually an independent body of people to vet each movie and make the appropriate decisions. In the UK this job falls to the British Board of Film Classification, and these decisions are mostly based on the incidence of bad language, nudity, sex and violence within each picture. However, in Sweden, some cinemas are going to introduce a new rating system alongside the one for age that will advise whether the film passes the Bechdel Test. They will be the first in the world to do this. For those who are unfamiliar with this test, it is a marker of the incidences of women on screen. The test is simple. To pass the test a film must contain a scene in which two named women have a conversation that is not about a man and do...