BIG NEWS FOR DOC MAKERS: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS GRANTS DMCA EXEMPTIONS

By Scott Macaulay

Big news from the Library of Congress today. In their three-year annual review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, restrictions on documentary makers related to the fair use of copyrighted materials were significantly eased. Attorney Michael C. Donaldson, who assembled the coalition lobbying for these changes and provided pro bono counsel, commented, “Documentary filmmakers have been freed of the high price extracted by rights holders, or the high price of possible criminal prosecution, when they need to reach public domain material or material to be used pursuant to fair use. All they have to do is follow a few simple rules and they can copy such materials from commercially available DVDs.”

Here is a summary of the new regulations provided by Donaldson’s publicists:

Today the Librarian of Congress approved the recommendations of the Copyright Office granting relief to all documentary filmmakers. It granted the International Documentary Association’s request for an exemption from the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that made it a crime to rip a DVD.

The exact language is that if you are engaged in documentary filmmaking, you can copy a DVD without violating the DMCA as follows: “solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use…”

In order to qualify for the exemption you must meet all of the following criteria:

1. You must have lawfully acquired a lawfully made DVD. In other words, don’t buy a pirated copy. Don’t steal a legitimate copy.

2. You may only copy short portions of material for a “non-infringing use” which essentially translates into material in the public domain or material that you plan to use pursuant to the doctrine of fair use.

3. You must be making the copy to use in a documentary.

4. You want to be sure that you are well aware of public domain and fair use laws.

5. You must be a

… Read the rest

MICHAEL PAUL STEPHENSON, “BEST WORST MOVIE”

By Scott Macaulay

The most unlikely act of cultural excavation and redemption, Michael Paul Stephenson’s Best Worst Movie is a hilarious and poignant celebration of not only the communal experience of making and watching movies but the sheer randomness of life itself. The doc is Stephenson’s attempt to find out why a seemingly execrable B-movie he made as a child actor, Troll 2, has garnered a cult following of viewers who not only get off on its badness but also find an odd kind of joy in its screwy storytelling.

While Stephenson is present in the film, he smartly chooses as the doc’s focus one of his co-stars, a small-town Alabama dentist named George Hardy, who onscreen resembles a cross between Jim Nabors and Joe Biden. Hardy is the quintessential American optimist, whose sunny disposition and boundless good cheer makes him beloved by his patients, his town and even his ex-wife. Stephenson follows Hardy as he discovers that the 1989 no-budget horror film he acted in has developed a cult audience that stages parties and screenings, complete with viewers who know the film line by line and shout out its most egregious bits of dialogue. As Best Worst Movie progresses, Stephenson widens his scope, watching as Hardy reconnects with fellow co-stars, travels to screenings of the film across the country, and even reunites with the director, Claudio Fragasso, who, while he won’t turn down the airline tickets to the screenings, also won’t come to grips with his film’s designation on iMDB as the worst film ever made.

I’ll confess here to not having seen Troll 2. But watching the footage included in Best Worst Movie, it’s easy to see why Stephenson distanced himself from the movie for so many years and why one of its actresses basically views it as having ended her career. Indeed, the film’s high-camp quotient is so extreme, and Stephenson and editors Andrew Matthews and Katie Graham are so adept in hitting every possible comic beat that big chunks of the film at its SXSW premiere were inaudible over the audience’s laughter.

But what makes Best … Read the rest

SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN INFRINGING DOC RULE

By Scott Macaulay

Yesterday, in an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a statute that would have infringed on certain documentary makers’ First Amendment rights. Relating to the depiction of animal cruelty and killing on screen, the statute, by criminalizing such depictions, would have limited filmmakers’ abilities to cover any number of subjects ranging from hunting to our food industry to, ironically, animal abuse itself. The IFP New York was one of several organizations filing an amicus brief in support of the filmmaker filing the case, a documentarian named Robert Stevens who was sentenced to 37 months in Federal prison for including in his film acquired clips from a Japanese dog fight.

Attorney Michael Donaldson, an expert in copyright, clearance and rights issues (his Clearance and Copyright is a must-own for any producer) organized the supporting organizations, and his statement is below:

Today the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a statute on first amendment grounds that criminalized a lot of documentary filmmaking. Congress enacted a law to criminalize any depiction of any acts to animals in a film that results in the animals being killed or harmed, even if the activity on the screen is completely legal. Such a restriction would obviously cover hunting or fishing. The only requirement for prosecution was that the activity be illegal in the place that the film is possessed, exhibited, or sold. Even though the act exempted serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic, Chief Justice Roberts writing for an 8-1 court held the statute to be “substantially overbroad and therefore invalid under the First Amendment”

Three organizations of independent filmmakers stepped into the fray under the leadership of Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Michael C. Donaldson. The International Documentary Association, Film Independent, and IFP New York joined an Amicus Brief filed to help the Court understand the threat to documentary filmmakers. Donaldson said that the threat to documentary filmmakers across the country who might innocently include footage in their film that was legal when and where shot.

The case involved a documentary filmmaker by the name of Robert J. Stevens, who had

… Read the rest