NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence

RE-MIXING REALITY

April 7th, 2007

Now that everyone is (re)making documentaries, the issue of copyright is everyone’s problem.

The music world’s been battling this one for years, and now its raging in the documentary universe. In music the lawsuits started with sampling, then moved into downloading. And now in documentary, many are wondering - and testing - what’s fair game in using existing material to comment on the mediatized world we live in.

The debate heated up in Canada this week, with a piece on Canada’s best radio show,  and a nice article in one of Canada’s few magazines of note, (re)printed in the author’s blog here.

Copyright law is under review in Canada, and wisely, our great defenders of the documentary, at DOC, came out with a white paper on it late last year. In their research, DOC found that Canadian doc-makers spend, on average, 27% of their budgets on clearance. That’s crazy.  The NFB pulled 6 films from public view last year, because clearances have expired, and they can’t afford to renew.

“The freedom of documentary filmmakers to engage public space,” says DOC in the paper, is key.

The Canadian report comes on the heels of a fantastic study done in the US on Documentary and Fair Use. (US law is considerably different than Canadian law. Down there, Fair Use currently covers more usage, like parody, than does the restrictive Canadian “Fair Dealing”.) The idea behind the US report was to document precedents, and get the filmmakers to learn from each other, since fear of lawsuits dominated the thinking and usage. Now the report itself has been successfully used to defend new cases of Fair Use.

Last month, a bunch of US law professors even issued a comic book about  how Copyright is threatening Documentary and political practice.

Meanwhile, the youtubers couldn’t care less about insurance, clearance, fair use or lawsuits. Check out this hilarious video about remixing the remixes.

And one Canadian filmmaker is making a film about it all. He’s asking users to help him (re)make his film on line by uploading and re-editing material right on his website. Check out the latest from our friends at eyesteel, at open source cinema. 

Entry Filed under: Doc talk, Participatory Media, Uncategorized