Hollywood actor James Franco has taken time out from promoting Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful and speaking ambiguously about his sexuality to make a direct plea to the Australian Classification Board.

I Want Your Love, a film by Franco's friend and collaborator Travis Mathews was banned from showing at Melbourne Queer Film Festival and several other festivals in Australia.

The Australian Classification Board deemed the film, which includes a six-minute scene of real sex between two men, as unsuitable for audiences, despite allowing a film depicting sex between men and donkeys last year.

Franco, who worked with Mathews on Interior. Leather Bar, a film about the gay S&M scene in the 80s, has recorded a video on YouTube to protest the decision to ban the film. He says that the film uses sex in a 'sophisticated way'.

'Sex is such a big part of our lives,' continues Franco in the video 'to keep it from films that want to explore this human behavior is very short-sighted and I think very hypocritical. I don't think we'd be having this conversation if he had made a very violent film.'

Watch Franco's video plea to the Australian Classification Board here: