James Alan Ferman was an American-British television and theatre director.
15 Facts About James Ferman
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James Ferman studied at Cambridge and went onto become a TV and film director.
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James Ferman served in that role from 1975 to 1999 overseeing the classification of British films for more than 20 years and was variously criticised as being too harsh or too lenient.
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James Ferman was born on April 11,1930, the son of a film director.
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James Ferman started at Great Neck High School, New York in 1941.
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James Ferman received an English degree from Cornell University in 1951, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.
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James Ferman then studied English at King's College, Cambridge, earning an MA.
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From 1966 to 1975, James Ferman was a freelance director, working often for the BBC.
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At the BBFC, James Ferman oversaw extensive liberalization of censorship standards and fronted a successful campaign for the Home Office to prohibit common law private prosecutions against films, which were being used extensively during the 1970s.
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James Ferman later faced criticism for refusing to allow several films from the 1970s to be released following the introduction of video censorship under the Video Recordings Act 1984 and the media outcry over "video nasties".
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James Ferman was well known for his policies on illegal weapons, which resulted in sequences involving nunchuks being removed, including in films such as Enter the Dragon starring Bruce Lee, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Namco video game Soul Blade.
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In 1997, James Ferman clashed with new home secretary Jack Straw over policy on pornographic videos.
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James Ferman released several hardcore pornographic films uncut after liberalizing the guidelines in 1996, suggesting that relaxation of restrictions would discourage illegal material.
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On 24 December 2002, James Ferman was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London, with acute pneumonia.
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James Ferman married to Monica Robinson in 1956 and the couple had two children, a son and a daughter.