Free Thai Cinema: Tropical Malady director censored

Award-winning director Apitchatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady) has shown his films all over the world, including here in Minneapolis for a 2004 retrospective, but with his latest, he can't get a showing in his home country. The Thai director submitted Syndromes and a Century (Sang Satawat) to Thailand's Censorship Board, and was told four cuts had to be made for the film to be released commercially. Saying he treats his "works as my own sons or my daughters," Weerasethakul refused to make the cuts. Now the Thai government says they'll hold onto his film print until the four prescribed deletions are made. Thai artists have begun an online petition -- already signed by more than 4,000 people -- urging the government to return the film print, but also seeking "a long-needed modernization of Thai legislation concerning movie censorship," which is based on a law from 1930. Sign the petition here.

Girls suspended for saying V-word during Vagina Monologues reading

Three girls were suspended by their Cross River, NY, high school for defying a ban on saying the word "vagina" during a reading from the play The Vagina Monologues. The word is "inappropriate," explains vaginaless principal Richard Leprine, because the event, a reading put on by a literary magazine, was open to the community, which includes children.

Monologues author Eve Ensler applauded the students' defiance, and said: "The school's position is absurd, a throwback to the Dark Ages. So what, if children were to hear the word? Would that be terrible? We're not talking about plutonium here, or acid rain, a word that destroys lives. It's a body part!"