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Seminar

Reducing Risk in Documentary: Insurance, Copyright & Defamation Essentials

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PT

Ethos Society , 3435 Wilshire Blvd, 14th floor, Los Angeles CA
  • Dale Cohen, Speaker
  • Loralee Sundra, Speaker
  • Carra Greenberg, Speaker
Event image with three panelist headshots

This multi-part program is designed to provide documentary filmmakers with practical legal tools to identify, assess, and reduce risk throughout the life of a project. The sessions will emphasize best practices that help filmmakers protect their work, secure their rights, strengthen their projects, and prepare for financing, insurance, distribution, and exhibition opportunities.

Designed for emerging and mid-career filmmakers, the program focuses on three of the most pressing challenges facing nonfiction storytellers today: production insurance, libel and defamation risks, and increasingly aggressive copyright enforcement. Participants will gain a clearer understanding of the legal realities of documentary production and learn strategies for protecting both their projects and their creative autonomy.

Attendees will learn how to evaluate and obtain key insurance protections, including production insurance and Errors & Omissions (E&O) coverage; identify and address potential libel and defamation concerns; and navigate copyright disputes, fair use questions, takedown notices, and evolving enforcement practices. The program will also explore how insurers, distributors, and legal reviewers assess documentary projects, and why strong legal practices should begin long before a film is completed.
 

Event Time CHANGE
9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. PST

Location
Ethos Society, 3435 Wilshire Blvd, 14th floor

Capacity
Up to 60 people in person 

There is no virtual component to this event

Attendees and Participation
Open to the public for registration and in-person participation

Snacks and lunch will be provided

Learnings from the event will be made available to IDA Members
 

Photography
By entering the event premises, you consent to photography and its/their release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction to be used by IDA and its affiliates. Images may be used to promote similar IDA events in the future.

Access
The building is accessible through the underground parking lot.

If you have any access needs that you would like to share with us, please email access@documentary.org at least two weeks prior to the event. We will do our best to accommodate.

Code of Conduct
All participants agree to read and approve the IDA Events Code of Conduct here.
 

TENTATIVE Schedule
subject to change; breaks are not listed but will be incorporated throughout the day

9:30 AM – Welcome & Introduction

9:45 AM – Contracts & Collaborations: Building a Strong Legal Foundation for Success

11:15 AM – Copyright, Archival Materials & Fair Use

12:45 PM – Defamation & Documentary Storytelling

1:30 PM – Lunch

2:15 PM – Insuring Your Documentary: Production & E&O Coverage

3:00 PM – Breakout Sessions: Q&A / Closing Discussion

3:30 PM – Wrap
 

Event Participants

    Dale Cohen

    Dale Cohen

    Dale Cohen is Director and founder of the UCLA Doc Film Legal Clinic, where he leads a group of student-clinicians providing pro bono counsel to documentary filmmakers on a wide range of content issues, including vetting of films for copyright/fair use issues, and production counsel on all matters that filmmakers may encounter. Dale is a frequent speaker at media and entertainment law conferences and film festivals and also teaches a Media Law class at UCLA Law. He is co-author of leading textbook Media and the Law (2d Ed. Carolina Press).

    Dale has also served as Special Counsel to FRONTLINE, the award‐winning PBS documentary series, for nearly a decade. His extensive experience as a media lawyer, litigator and news executive includes positions at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, NPR, Cox Enterprises, Inc. and Tribune Company. Dale was also a litigation partner at the law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Denton's) in Chicago.

    Loralee Sundra

    Loralee Sundra

    Loralee Sundra is the Associate Director of the Documentary Film Legal Clinic at UCLA School of Law. In addition to full time Clinic instruction and representation of documentary clients, Loralee leads the Clinic’s documentary filmmakers’ legal education program with a focus on expanding the Clinic’s pro bono outreach in collaboration with film festivals and media organization events. 

    Prior to joining the Clinic in January 2021, Loralee practiced media and entertainment law for twenty-three years with the boutique firm of Leopold, Petrich & Smith, and, more recently, as a member of the nationally recognized Media & Entertainment group of Ballard Spahr LLP. Loralee is a member of the Archival Producers Alliance Generative AI Initiative Advisory Board and, in addition to her Clinic instruction, Loralee teaches media law courses at UCLA Extension and regularly leads presentations on topics in media and intellectual property.

    Carra Greenberg

    Carra Greenberg

    Carra Greenberg is an attorney and producer. Her work includes commercials, docu-series, and feature content for a variety of brands and networks. Her first feature documentary, Daughters of the Sexual Revolution, explored the women’s movement through the lens of the original Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and won a Grand Jury Prize at SXSW. Havana Libre documents the underground world of surfing in Cuba. Her most recent documentary, Shuffle, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at SXSW in 2025. She is an honors graduate of New York Law School’s Social Justice Policy Center.