“Banned” is the word everyone reaches for, and it does a lot of unearned work. A film blocked by a government censor and a film quietly shelved by its own studio are not the same event — they have different causes, different paper trails, and different lessons. If this archive is going to mean anything, it has to stop using one label for all of them.
So here is the working taxonomy the project uses. It is deliberately a little strict.
1 — Banned
An organ of the state prohibits exhibition outright. The clearest case, and the rarest in its pure form. The key evidence is an actual order: who signed it, under what authority, and on what stated grounds.
2 — Refused classification
The film is not forbidden so much as denied the certificate it needs to be shown — a softer instrument that produces the same result.
3 — Cut
The film is released, but only in an altered form. The interesting question is what the surviving version is allowed to mean once the objectionable part is gone.
A cut is not a smaller ban. It is a different act — the state co-authoring the film it permits.
4 — Withdrawn or suppressed
No censor required. A distributor shelves a finished film; a director pulls his own work; a penalty on a person makes a film effectively disappear without anyone signing a ban.
Why the distinction earns its keep
Sorting each film into one of these gives the index its spine: you can finally ask comparative questions — which instrument a given country reaches for, how that changes by decade, and what kinds of films attract which fate. That is the difference between a list of outrageous stories and an argument.