CINEMA BOSSES PULL FANNING FILM OVER RAPE SCENE

Officials at Concerned Women For America are leading the charge to boycott the movie, in which Fanning's character is raped.

The controversial Deborah Kampmeier film was supposed to hit movie screens late last year (07), but protests from family organisations led to legal investigations in certain parts of the country and the stalling of the movie's release.

Prosecutors in North Carolina, where Hounddog was filmed, reviewed the movie in November and interviewed crew members, producers and Fanning, who plays a nine-year-old girl in the film, and declared that although some people might find the film "disturbing and distasteful,� there was no evidence that the scene constituted “sexual activity� under North Carolina law, and cries of child exploitation were dismissed.

Promoting the film last week (ends20Sep08), director Kampmeier told WENN, "I feel a lot of compassion towards these people that are so angry about the film. Rape is a really tough subject and the film deals with issues that are really painful to look at and I think that a lot of people don't have the support in their life to look at their own lives; to look at their own pain.

"Instead they're facing their pain and projecting their anger and their fear onto my film. A lot of agendas are being projected off this film that have nothing to do with the film and they're being projected onto it by people who haven't actually seen the film. It's too bad.

"I didn't make the film to make a controversial film or a social commentary. I made the film for my heart and if it touches someone else's heart that's what it's about for me."

And the writer/director isn't alone in stating that her movie is an important one that should be seen; officials at U.S. women's organisation NOW is urging their supporters to rush to cinemas.

Hollywood NOW President Lindsey Horvath says, "Hounddog is a film that calls you to action. It returns innocence to the adolescent discovery of sexuality, and restores hope for those whose innocence has been taken.

"It's a brilliantly poignant film that clearly depicts how free expression of female sexuality remains unacceptable in today's world, and what survivors of sexual violence must do to reclaim their bodies and selves from their perpetrators. We need more women in Hollywood like Kampmeier to uncover society's oppression of women."

The film went on limited release in America last week (19Sep08).