James Alan Ferman (11 April 1930 – 24 December 2002) was an American television and theatre director. He was the Secretary (later termed Director) of the British Board of Film Classification from 1975 to 1999. Career Ferman started at Great Neck High School, New York in 1941. He received an English degree from Cornell University in 1951, where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. He originally went to the United Kingdom while serving in the United States Air Force stationed at Bentwaters Air Force Base. He studied at King's College, Cambridge. Before his time at the BBFC, Ferman worked on TV series such as Armchair Theatre, and after moving from ABC to ATV, Emergency Ward 10 and many documentaries. He also wrote the libretto for the musical Zuleika. At the BBFC, 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. In the late 1980s he faced criticism by some media outlets who accused him of allowing videos to pass which they blamed for real-life violence. This led him to take caution over violent and sexually violent works, but his continued liberalization led to an anti-BBFC campaign run by the Daily Mail. He 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" (a collection of low-budget horror and exploitation films, often containing violence against women and said to be too violent and gory for UK release). These films, including works such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, were not without cultural value, said many cultural commentators. Ferman was also 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. One notable change in 1991's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze was after being unable to tell "the difference between a martial arts weapon and a sausage, and believing that children would be similarly bamboozled." However, under Ferman's tenure cuts to films, once comparatively routine, became exceedingly scarce. While liberal commentators complained about his refusal to release