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[Carrie McLaren <stay.free AT verizon.net>]

Posted online at: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/


This week, two important links for fans of documentary films (and 
"illegal art"):

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University has 
selected eight short films as finalists in its Moving Image Contest 
and posted them online. The films aim to show "some of the tensions 
between art and intellectual property law," focusing either on music 
or documentary film:
http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/contest/finalists/

My vote goes to Christopher Sims' "An Army, One by One" for its 
simplicity and clarity of message. In fact, this short makes the 
perfect lead-in for "Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the 
Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers," a report from 
the Center for Social Media on how our ever-expanding "culture of 
ownership" is handicapping documentary filmmakers:
http://centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/index.htm

Authors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi interviewed 45 filmmakers 
about the problems they've encountered in securing rights to music, 
historical footage, and other so-called intellectual property. The 
discussion includes some revealing anecdotes:

* Any time people featured in a film start singing a song, 
documentarians should open their wallets. The makers of THE PERFECT 
CANDIDATE (a documentary about Oliver North's run for Senate) had to 
pay $3,000 to include a scene where a woman sang "God Bless America" 
at a campaign rally. And that's nothing. AOL Time Warner, which owns 
the rights to "Happy Birthday," charges $15,000-$20,000 for one verse 
of the song. Filmmakers who can't afford to pay or risk legal 
conflicts end up cutting out scenes altogether, as Linda Goode Bryant 
did when the principal subject in FLAG WARS (a documentary about the 
clash in a gentrifying area between African Americans and newly 
arrived gays and lesbians) starting singing along with the radio.

* Sometimes rights owners require a "most favored nation clause" in 
the licensing agreements, which guarantees the rights owner the 
highest price the filmmaker can pay. In other words, if Capitol 
quotes the filmmaker $3,000 to use an old Johnny Mercer song, and the 
filmmaker also licenses a Looney Tunes clip from Warner Brothers for 
$5,000, then the filmmaker will automatically have to pay Capitol 
$5,000, too. As Jeff Tuchman describes it, "It's like going to go the 
grocery store and pinching your pennies and using your coupons, and 
then the last thing you buy is a steak for $20, and then every soda 
and bag of M&Ms you bought suddenly costs $20."

* Directors often avoid shooting in places where background music is 
playing so that they don't have to worry about clearing the rights. 
For example: when making her film LITTLE PEOPLE, Jan Krawitz stopped 
shooting dwarf children exercising in gym class when the instructor 
played "YMCA."

Reading this stuff, you get the idea that producer Katy Chevigny is 
right when she tells aspiring filmmakers that "the only film you can 
make for cheap and not have to worry about rights clearance is about 
your grandma, yourself, or your dog."

But then there are people like Jeff Krulik (Heavy Metal Parking Lot 
series) who aggressively exercise "fair use" and use many short clips 
in their films without licensing. On the downside, they can't get 
distribution. Krulik, for example, is limited to posting his film 
HITLER'S HAT online and screening it at festivals and independent 
venues. But I can't help rooting for this route, for a number of 
reasons: it strengthens fair use, results in much better films, and 
ultimately encourages people to find new ways to get their films out 
(Keep in mind that there's no law saying it's wrong.)...which reminds 
me:

Though the report includes many fine recommendations for solving some 
of the documentarians' problems, it could use a positive word about 
alternative distribution methods. MoveOn's success in distributing 
Robert Greenwald's UNCOVERED and OUTFOXED through house parties is 
one example of films finding an audience with the mass media machine. 
And, of course, there's always the internet. So on that note: 
http://www.planetkrulik.com/

(Thanks to David Glenn.)

* * *

In other news, this man has a good idea:

DON'T SUE CHRIS REILLY CAMPAIGN
("Defending artist's rights through preemptive litigation prevention")
http://www.dontsuechrisreilly.org/index.html