Ken Brecher has resigned as Executive Director of the Sundance Institute, effective April 30, after a 14-year tenure. He will assume the role of Strategic Advisor for the Institute over the next two years. Brecher's exit is the second major departure from the Sundance Institute in the past two months, following Geoffrey Gilmore's resignation as director of the Sundance Film Festival in February.

Brecher took the helm in 1996, following a distinguished career in arts administration, during which he headed a foundation, a museum and a theater company. "I have completed my work in building an outstanding leadership team," he said in a statement. "I could not be more confident that the Institute is now poised for the next phase of its innovative work in supporting independent artists." 

Brecher's primary responsibility has been the Institute's core programs. On the doc side, he was a key participant in establishing the Sundance Institute's Documentary Fund. Working in more than 50 countries, the Fund is one of the biggest funders of documentary projects devoted to human rights, civil rights and freedom of expression, having supported such celebrated projects as Born into Brothels, Iraq in Fragments, and Trouble the Water.

Brecher also reconceived the Composers Lab and expanded the Institute's support of film composers through the creation of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program. Brecher also established the Sundance Collection at UCLA, where the history of independent film is preserved and conserved in perpetuity. The Collection now contains over 200 films thought to be among the seminal works of this genre. In addition, the Sundance Film Festival expanded its commitment to documentary and world cinema film, and nurtured its New Frontier program as the intersection of art, technology and the moving image.   

Brecher has been responsible for establishing the Institute's strong and diverse base of support for the $26 million annual operating budget. He has attracted major grants from The Ford Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, The Doris Duke Foundation, The Open Society Institute, The Annenberg Foundation and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, among others. 

Wally Weisman, Chair of the Board of the Sundance Institute, said of the departing executive director, "Brecher's efforts will stand the Institute in good stead in the years ahead." A search for a successor to Brecher will be commenced in the near term.

(Made in America was part of the IDA's 2008 DocuWeek, by the way. The 2009 DocuWeeks Call for Entries is now happening. Get information here.)

Posted on The Huffington Post, his story is a common one for most doc filmmakers: he had trouble rounding up funding, he reveals what he learned from his subjects, and discovered that it's tough to change the world through filmmaking.

It's a great read, especially when he reveals how he twisted his pitch about the movie which covers the four-decade-old gang war between Los Angeles gangs, the Crips and Bloods.

So I began wondering what I could say in my pitch that I wasn't saying to get people interested. I needed to say something about this subject that was more complete than what they've learned from the evening news, the local newspapers and gangsta rap. So I came up with a question to pose to potential funders: "If affluent white teenagers in Beverly Hills were forming neighborhood gangs, arming themselves with automatic assault rifles and killing other affluent white teenagers who were also living in upscale neighborhoods and were also arming themselves with AK 47s and shooting to kill, what would the response of our society be? Would society respond or would society ignore it? Would our government respond, if so, how would our government respond?"

Well I finally hit on something because it was this question that I asked a Silicon Valley businessman named Steve Luczo. He thought for a moment and then answered: "Affluent white kids would never be allowed to gang-bang as our society would do whatever means was necessary to make sure a problem of this magnitude was stopped immediately."

See the fruits of his labor in the trailer here:

Find out more about the film at www.cripsandbloodsmovie.com.

The call for entries of our annual DocuWeeks™ program is now live. Get the full 2009 entry information here.

IDA DocuWeeks™ helps to qualify outstanding new feature and short documentaries for Academy Award® consideration, by providing its participants with a seven-day commercial theatrical run in Los Angeles County and in the Borough of Manhattan. (Shorts will screen in the County of Los Angeles only, per Academy requirements.)

Why should you enter? We'll let our ever-expanding list of past DocuWeeks™ participants fill you in.

"Kudos to DocuWeek and its Theatrical Showcase, a wonderful screening program that is well-curated and generous to films that don't have distributors in place. thanks to Docuweek, important, little noticed films can qualify for the Academy Awards and be seen in great theaters."

-- Alex Gibney, Academy Award winner, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

"The IDA provides an extremely valuable service to filmmakers with Docuweek. It's unlikely I would have been able to qualify my films for Academy consideration without it."

--James Longley, Academy Award nominee, Sari's Mother (2007); Iraq in Fragments (2006)

"DocuWeek is a must! In a highly competitive and ever-changing theatrical market, DocuWeek allows documentary films to be qualified for the big awards. It's a great way to showcase films at a theatre with other documentaries before deciding on a release plan or a distributor."

--Amy Berg, Academy Award nominee, Deliver Us from Evil (2006)

"In 2006, the selection of our film The Blood of Yingzhou District for IDA's DocuWeek marked the beginning of the road to winning an Oscar that year.

Our recent short film, Tongzhi in Love (2008), is every bit as beautiful a film—maybe more beautiful—but (ominous music starts here) it wasn't ready in time for the IDA and we handled Oscar qualification, yes, ourselves. We made the Academy Short List in October 2008, so we now had a better than 50/50 chance of a nomination. The devil had us in his hand; we were rehearsing our speech, picking out (in Ruby's case) her gown (I wasn't going to wear a gown) and...you know what happened next.

The moral of this story is clear: Go with IDA.”

--Thomas Lennon & Ruby Yang, Academy Award winners, The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006)

Not convinced? See the rundown from last year's event here. Read more past participants' quotes, see a list of notable past documentaries selected for IDA's DocuWeeks™ and find out more about the 2009 program here.

The Cinema Eye Honors brought the 2008-2009 Awards Season to a crescendo last night in New York City, with co-chairs AJ Schnack and Thom Powers presiding over the ceremony IndiePix, the New York-based online film distributor, was the presenting sponsor and producing partner for this year's event. The Cinema Eye Honors was launched in March 2008.

And the awards went to...

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking: Man on Wire (Dir.: James Marsh; Prod.: Simon Chinn)
Outstanding Achievement in Direction: Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir)
Outstanding Achievement in Production: Simon Chinn (Man on Wire)
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Peter Zeitlinger (Encounters at the End of the World)
Outstanding Achievement in Editing: Jinx Godfrey (Man on Wire)
Outstanding Achievement in Grapic Design and Animation: Yoni Goldman and David Polonsky (Waltz With Bashir)
Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition: Max Richter (Waltz with Bashir)
Outstanding Achievement in International Feature: Waltz with Bashir, (Dir./Prod.: Ari Folman; Prods.: Serge Lalou, Gerhard Meixner, Yael Nahlieli, Roman Paul)
Outstanding Achievement in Debut Feature: Up the Yangtze (Dir.: Yung Chang)
Audience Choice Prize: Up the Yangtze (Dir.: Yung Chang)

For more on the Cinema Eye Honors, click here.  And for some candid reflectrions from Cinema Eye co-chair/founder AJ Schnack, click here.

It's not often that documentary news make Entertainment Weekly's Hit List, but when the subject is our high profile Secretary of State, none of the usual rules apply.

Actually, the Supreme Court is trying to decide exactly which rules DO apply to Hillary: The Movie.  The 2008 attack film, by the conservative group Citizens United, was released while Clinton was running for President. It features a number of critics, includng Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter. The Court has taken on the case to determine whether or not the project should be considered a film or an ad. 

Hillary: The Movie was funded in part by corporate money from Citizens United. Federal law currently forbids corporations and unions from spending directly for/against candidates. According to CNN,

A conservative group behind the movie wanted to promote it during the heat of the presidential primary season last year, but a federal court had blocked any ads, as well as airings on cable TV video-on-demand.

The film later aired in several theaters and was released on DVD, outlets that were not subject to federal regulation.

Challengers are framing the challenge as a free speech issue.  The Chicago Tribune says:

Citizens United sued to challenge those restrictions. Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the group's attorney, urged the court to declare that corporations have the same free-speech right as others. "Freedom is being smothered," he said of the regulations.

Key questions that have come up in the case include determining whether or not a film like this differs from news information programs on public or broadcast television; why the film is allowed to be shown in some places but not others, and  how the length of a piece affects its standing as an ad. 

Read more:
Variety
Chicago Tribune
CNN.com
Doculink.org - There's a spirited discussion going on here over the last week. You'll have to become a Doculink member to read it. 

Peter Scarlet, who stepped down as artistic director of the Tribeca Film Festival a little over a week after the announcement that Geoffrey Gilmore would be leaving the Sundance Film Festival to head Tribeca Enterprises, will assume executive director responsibilities at the two-year-old Middle East International Film Festival. Scarlet replaces Nashwa al-Ruwaini, who will join the board of the festival. In addition, Jon Fitzgerald, co-founder of Slamdance and a past artistic director of the AFI Fest, who was brought on as the original festival director in 2007, did not have his contract renewed by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, which funds the festival.

The Middle East, and the United Arab Emirates in particular, has been a hotbed of recent mediamaking activity. According to Variety, in addition to launching the Middle East International Film Festival, the Abu Dhabi-the capital city of the seven United Arab Emirates-launched a $1 billion production company, Imagenation, and developed co-funding deals with Participant Media, Hyde Park Productions and National Geographic Films. What's mpore, both Tribeca Enterprises and the Sundance Film Festival have been in talks to launch adjunct festivals in the Middle East-Tribece in Qatar, which will launch in November, and Sundance in Abu Dhabi, but plans have yet to be finalized there.

RiP: A Remix Manifesto, the controversial new doc by Montreal filmmaker Brett Gaylor, opens with a startling scene. A musician is prepping backstage for a club date, donning shades and putting on his hoodie. Prancing through a stream of young acolytes dressed in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers, he yells, “Make some noise!” Many scream, arms thrust in the air, as their star reaches the stage and dramatically starts to play his instrument—a computer.

As the crowd gyrates to the raucous, eminently danceable music unleashed by Girl Talk, a 20-something Pittsburgh computer geek who’s real name is Gregg Gillis, Gaylor’s film grinds to a halt several times. He wants us to know that the catchy, rhythmic work driving the club dancers wild is a complex remix of songs ranging from rock anthems by Queen to the charming bubble-gum soul of the early Jackson 5. It’s all been slowed down or speeded up and overlaid with so many other samples that the piece has been turned into a sonic gumbo cooked up by a digital master.

Girl Talk’s music may be hugely enjoyable but, according to current copyright laws, it’s illegal because copyrighted artists aren’t being paid. What’s does Girl Talk think he’s doing? Gillis grins, aw-shucks style: “Putting Elton John in a headlock and pouring beer on him.”

Though Girl Talk is featured throughout RiP, this is no bio-pic. Gaylor isn’t shy about his intentions, explaining early on that he’s making “a film about a war of ideas. The Internet is the battleground.” If more ink—or Web space—than blood is being shed, it’s not because this fight lacks issues. Count the buzz words that electrify the film: Copyright, Copyleft, intellectual property, Creative Commons, Public Domain vs. Private Interest, Fair Use and Fair Dealing.

Joining Girl Talk is a cast of characters ready to animate those concerns. There’s Lawrence Lessig, Barack Obama’s old teaching colleague at University of Chicago and, according to Gaylor, the country’s “coolest lawyer”; he believes in Copyleft, a system that would modify copyright laws, allowing for limited downloading and remixing to occur. Uhere’s Cory Doctorow, an award-winning science fiction writer, blogger and essayist, who is an articulate supporter of Creative Commons, a group that wants to extend the amount of cultural works that could be used creatively by others. And there’s Dan!O’Neill, the ’70s underground cartoonist whose parodies of Mickey Mouse landed him in the Supreme Court, where he was judged to have misused Disney’s famous rodent.

What Gaylor doesn’t supply is a group of sensible pro-copyright representatives. The film decidedly has a point-of-vidw that leans leftward. For Gaylor and his generation, the creative process has changed. Consumers are no longer passive; they’ve become creators, remixing music and film, transforming it into something that pulsates and is wildly new and expressive.

Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media Director at American University, isn’t persuaded. “RiP is a great beginning to a better conversation about creativity, culture and copyright,” she observes. “Gaylor and others note that owners can become censors. But we should be careful not to exaggerate the problem.

“Doc filmmakers in the US enjoy the right of Fair Use—the right to quote copyrighted materials without permission or payment and have used it to make films like Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which have shown in theaters!and on TV,” Aufderheide continues. “Canadian law also lets makers of new culture quote copyrighted material for free under some circumstances. [It’s called Fair Dealing.] It’s important that people both know their rights and use them and also document where they are stopped in creative work because of copyright restrictions.”

Gaylor structures RiP around its subtitle, A Remix Manifesto. When asked, he can recite it verbatim: “Number one: Creativity always builds on the past. Number two: The past will always try to control the future. Number three: Our future is becoming less free. Number four: To cuild something free, you must limit the control of the past.”

Gaylor offers several examples of how creativity is built on the past, none more ironic than the twisted tale of the Rolling Stones’ baby-boomer ’60s hit “The Last Time.” Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had actually appropriated an earlier gospel song by the legendary Staple Singers while “writing” their tune, and, in turn, it was recorded again in an orchestrated adaptation by their agent, Andrew Loog Oldham. Thirty years later, the Verve sampled Oldham’s version in their most popular song, “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” At that point, Jagger and Richards’ publishing company sued the Verve for copyright violation—and won hands down, garnering the rights to their song. As the younger group collapsed during what should have been a triumphal international tour, Jagger and Richards made more money selling the Verve’s song to Nike for a commercial.

RiP is filled with complex tales as bittersweet as that one, each illustrating a position in the Manifesto. The avant-garde group Negativland’s battle with U2’s record label over their parodic use of the hit “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is expertly retold. So is O’Neill’s epic legal battle with Disney, along with the artist’s claim the he “stole the mouse fair and square.” Gaylor shows O’Neill playing guitar and piano, singing and drawing. The point is clear: The man is an artist; he chose to use Mickey as a rich source for satire, not because of a lack of creativity; and his sad saga clearly demonstrates that “the past will always try to control the future.”

Eventually, the film moves from the copyright-laden Disneyland to the Promised Land: Brazil. Under Minister of Culture and world-class musician Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian government partnered with Creative Commons to give people living in impoverished areas of the country a chance to learn and be educated in current music technology. Going far beyond accessing free cutting-edge club music, Brazil now offers patented medicine free, or at a low cost, to its citizens.

Girl Talk, whose day job as Gregg Gillis was, until recently, a bio-medical researcher, would approve of Brazil’s radical solution. Neither Girl Talk nor Brazil is willing to pay license holders, citing higher artistic and ethical claims.

Aufderheide, for one, doesn’t endorse Gaylor’s subjects and their tactics. “We don’t need to blow up copyright policy in order to get a more generous and participatory culture. Copyright is unbalanced right now, but we can act to change that with tools that already exist in both policy and practice. Digital didn’t destroy the basic logic of copyright law. Copyright law will adapt and change if new creators demand it.”

When asked about the characters he sympathetically portrays in RiP, Gaylor is quick to counter Aufderheide’s critique. “The film doesn’t really advocate the abolition of intellectual property rights; it advocates for a reasonable truce in this war. Look at Lessig. He isn’t proposing an abolition of copyright, but a creative commons. He’s saying, ‘Can we look at the existing copyrights, can we look at what is intellectual property, and do we need to have this really rigid, maximalist, all-rights-reserved approach, when we know that everybody is able to distribute work around the world with or without the copyright holder’s permission?’”

Gaylor pauses, then adds, “We have to think about ways to encourage that without completely negating an artist’s rights. In our case, we’re asking, ‘What rights are we comfortable with giving away? What rights will actually move us further along, to a broader audience that we’re able to keep?’ That’s the type of conversation that really needs to happen. Even though the film is a manifesto—and it’s a very pointed argument—I don’t actually think the solution is black-and-white.”

Gaylor and his colleagues at EyeRteelFilm, Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, have created Open Source Cinema, a digital approach that allows them to collaborate online with other filmmakers and their audience. Gaylor has been posting iterations of RiP online for over a year—and the audience has responded. Sixty-four students who were enamored with the project created a rotoscoped animated scene of hipsters dancing to Girl Talk.

“One of the cool thhngs that I’m really excited about is the concept of remixing our Times Square scene,” says Gaylor. The devastating sequence shows Gaylor not being able to shoot in the massive New York City tourist spot because all of the walls are covered with logos and advertising. “We’re rushing to do that right now, getting ready for our South by Southwest US festival launch. There’s a page on Open Source Cinema right now for the Times Square remix. I’ve had somebody cut up the shots of Times Square that appear at the end of the current cut. We’ve started a process of saying ‘OK, can we remix Times Square from this private space to a public one?’ We posted what we’d cut together and people are starting to come back with their responses. It’s really exciting: People are rotoscoping them, Photoshoqping them, all sorts of things. We’re going to put that into the end of the film.

“I feel that it’s only when we can give the film away, no excuses, online, that things will really take off,” Gaylor maintains. “The idea is that we’ll show the film in 2010 online after a year of remixing to see what's happened to RiP after it’s had its life on the festival circuit, hopefully a theatrical run and a DVD.

“There’s a call to action at the end of the film that says ‘Take the film, remix it, do what you want with it and see what happens,’ Gaylor continues. “So we’ll collect that back again and add more material about what’s been happening to some of our main characters. I’d like to revisit all that after a year to see what’s changed, what are the new battles—what did we win and what did we lose?”

Marc Glassman is the editor of POV, Canada's leading documentary magazine and Montage, the publication of the Directors Guild of Canada. He's one of the founders of the Toronto new media festival Images and a former programmer at Canada's Hot Docs festival.

Filmmaking is a constant struggle between creative vision and budgetary restraint. In the production of our documentary, Bigger Stronger Faster, no issue better demonstrated this tug-of-war than our use of archival footage. As writers/producers, we quickly learned about an important tool called the Fair Use Doctrine, which could help us balance the conflict between our goal of being legally and fiscally responsible, and telling the most honest and accurate version of our story.

The first problem we encountered is that it seemed like Fair Use was sort of an urban legend: Does it really exist? Can you really use archival clips without licensing them? And does anyone understand how this all works? We spoke with many producers, who seemed to fall into two camps: those who never evoke the Fair Use Doctrine because they heard it is so complicated to wage your legal argument, and those who cavalierly claim “Fair Use!” for every clip in their film and then cross their fingers. Three years later, we managed to finish, sell and distribute a film containing over 800 archival clips with hundreds of cases of the Fair Use Doctrine being practiced, and we decided to share some of the practical lessons we learned about Fair Use with other filmmakers.

Bigger Stronger Faster is the story of our director, Chris Bell, and his two brothers who grew up during the ’80s under the influence of muscular action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Hulk Hogan. The American Way was being projected to these young, impressionable boys as a win-at-all-cost mentality, and we were interested in how that affected their decision to use performance-enhancing drugs later in life. To truly examine the impact popular culture had on these three brothers, we knew we had to use archival footage from the time period. We also knew we could never effectively tell this story without actually showing clips from professional sports. As we broke down our wish list of archival footage, it was full of movie and television clips from some of the most high-profile and notoriously litigious corporations in the world, including the International Olympic Committee, Major League Baseball, the National Football League and World Wrestling Entertainment—all of whom did not want their brand associated with a movie about performance-enhancing drugs. When they all denied us the right to license footage from them, it was easy to become discouraged.

Thankfully, we had a dedicated archival team (Andy Zare, Pamela Aguilar and Susan Ricketts), and a legal team that specializes in the application of the Fair Use Doctrine. You must find an attorney familiar with Fair Use. In our case, attorneys Michael Donaldson and Lisa Callif (Donaldson & Callif) soon became two of the most valuable members of our team; additional critical advice came from veteran archive producers Prue Arndt, Deborah Ricketts and Barbara Gregson. What follows is a list of steps and tips that we learned along the way.

The Rough Cut—Organizing the Footage

The first decision we had to make was whether to include clips in our rough cut that we knew we could never license. One philosophy is to only use timecoded clips from legit archive houses so that when it’s time to picture-lock and finish your film, the process is relatively straightforward. The other philosophy (which we adopted) is to explore any and every possible editorial option—clearances be damned! We decided it was more important to edit the film without creative restrictions, and thus we ended up digitizing footage from traditional archive sources whenever possible, but also from every other imaginable source: DVDs, YouTube videos, TiVo’d news programs, old VHS tapes, etc. But it was far from reckless abandon. Our archival team implemented an organization system to timecode and track every piece of footage through a Filemaker Pro database. Since this approach resulted in hundreds of hours of archival footage, we had a team of interns constantly logging new footage into our database, and an apprentice editor working the night shift digitizing footage.

The Legal Review

Once we had a relatively coherent rough cut, we output a timecoded DVD with a corresponding log of the archival clips in the cut, identifying the copyright holder, current licensing status, and whether we anticipated making a Fair Use argument for the clip. This DVD/log went to Donaldson & Callif for review. They examined the context of every archive clip we had marked as Fair Use, and gave us their legal opinion on the strength of each case. In all honesty, we were anticipating an “Us-vs-Them” kind of relationship where the lawyers were going to try to stop us from exerting our creativity with an overly conservative approach to the law. On the contrary, the goal of our attorneys was to exercise the Fair Use Doctrine as often as possible—not just as a Plan B if the clip license is denied. If our use of a clip falls within the definition of Fair Use, we would use the doctrine—and quite often not even approach the copyright holder at all.

Fair Use or Not Fair Use?

This is not to say that our attorneys let us off easy. They denied Fair Use for as many archive clips as they approved. They were very strict about the necessity for the clip to be contextualized, rather than just an entertaining cutaway. For example, in one scene we explore the use of amphetamines by Air Force pilots. As a fun introduction, we tried to use that memorable clip from Top Gun: “I feel the need for speed!” Funny? Yes. Fair Use? No. Our attorneys told us that if we wanted to use the clip here, we would have to obtain the license from the movie studio as well as the talent releases from the actors in the scene (including Tom Cruise).

Making the Case—and the Story—Stronger

Donaldson & Callif provided not just a list of approvals and denials, but also notes about how we could alter the rough cut in order to make Fair Use arguments. Does that sound like creative notes coming from your lawyer? Well, we were surprised to learn that by accepting their advice and better contextualizing a clip, we not only waged a better Fair Use argument, but we quite often made a clearer story point. For example, there was a clip of Hulk Hogan delivering his wonderfully over-the-top motto: “Train, say your prayers and eat your vitamins…Be a real American!” We thought the clip was hilarious, but on the advice of our attorneys, we added voiceover before the clip explaining how much that motto meant to Bell and his brothers as children. The result was a stronger defense for Fair Use as well as a much more meaningful scene.

When to Hire an Attorney

Another important point to understand about our relationship with our Fair Use attorneys is that we brought them into the process very early—six months before we finished editing. It was essential to get their advice while we still had time to re-cut scenes—even re-think scenes, if need be. It would have been an enormous mistake to limit the value of their input by waiting until picture lock before involving them.

The Downside of Fair Use

One of the benefits of licensing a clip, in lieu of applying Fair Use, is that you also get access to a high-quality master. With Fair Use, you are on your own to find the highest-quality copy of the footage, which can take weeks and requires a great deal of manpower. We ended up “mastering” from sources as degraded as old VHS recordings of TV shows that we bought second-hand and from low-res online downloads for which no master source even existed. Post-production became more difficult as we had to convert and up-res all of these different formats to high-def. In a few cases, we actually decided to pay for the license of clips for which we knew we could employ Fair Use, simply to get the high-quality master.

E&O Insurance

E&O Insurance is another important factor when considering Fair Use, as there are currently only a few insurance providers that will cover it, and it’s safe to assume that they will need a little extra explanation before they dive in—and may even ask you to alter your edit before they will agree to insure your film. Our Fair Use attorneys were vital in these steps as well.

The Distribution Stage

When it comes time to sell your film, bear in mind that many distributors are still clueless about the application of Fair Use. We would recommend allowing money in your budget for your attorney to talk through your archive clearances with your distributor’s legal department. The Fair Use Doctrine is also a little more difficult to apply when marketing the film. This makes it tricky when your distributor is producing the trailer, for example. You’ll need to approve the trailer to make sure they are not using any Fair Use footage out of context, lest it lead to a lawsuit from the copyright holder and affect the release of your film. Remember, as the independent producer, you are responsible for claims made against your film, not your distributor.

When Copyright Holders Attack

After the film has been released, expect to get calls from copyright holders upset about your use of their footage. Most copyright holders have never heard of Fair Use, and you should allow some money in your budget to have your attorney call and talk through the evidence you have. If you have been responsible in your Fair Use decisions, most complaints will only require one phone call from your attorney to make them go away. We encountered a handful of copyright holders from some very large corporations who were not pleased that their clips had been used in our film, but we were well prepared by our attorneys and had no problem avoiding any legal claims.

Know Your Rights

On a final note, Fair Use is still an area of law that only a limited number of professionals have a solid handle on. The legal departments of the major studios and television networks are prone to roll over and settle with copyright holders, rather than defend their Fair Use cases. This makes it especially difficult for the independent producer, but if filmmakers were more confident in their knowledge of the Fair Use Doctrine, they could tell their stories as truly intended. In truth, it can be very stressful to challenge a copyright holder’s right to their own footage, but it can be done, and your best resources are a good attorney—and a strong antacid.

Tamsin Rawady and Alex Buono are narrative and documentary writer/producers based in Venice, CA. Their production company is Third Person (www.thirdpersonfilm.com).

SnagFilms brings the best nonfiction films to the web audience, promotes viral web distribution through virtual movie theater widgets, and engages viewers to assist in charitable and community efforts. The IDA has since 1982 worked to promote nonfiction film and video, support the efforts of documentary film and video makers around the world, and increase public appreciation for the documentary form.

The SnagFilms –IDA alliance will include the creation of an IDA Channel on Snagfilms.com, and the embedding of SnagFilms widgets on the IDA’s website, documentary.org. Additionally, content from SnagFilms’ indieWIRE, the largest online news source on independent film, will have a branded news window on both the homepage of documentary.org and its news section. Content from IDA’s Documentary Magazine and its website will also be available, on a branded basis, on the SnagFilms’ properties.

“For more than 25 years, the IDA has been the most broadly-based and thoughtful advocate and convener for the documentary community. This alliance will advance our mutual mission of increasing distribution opportunities for non-fiction filmmakers, and by surfacing indieWIRE’s renowned coverage of the film sector throughout the IDA media vehicles, it will keep the contributions of that sector in front of the industry and the broader public. For SnagFilms, aligning ourselves with the IDA is both a natural progression and an incredible honor,” said Rick Allen.

The SnagFilms-IDA alliance will include IDA participation in the SnagFilms Advisory Committee, participation by SnagFilms and indieWIRE representatives on IDA panels and seminars, and joint promotion. Additionally, IDA and SnagFilms will explore special benefits to filmmakers who sign up to become members of the IDA.

“SnagFilms has opened doors to documentary filmmakers, and its launch and early success has been a significant development for our industry in the past decade,” IDA Executive Director Michael Lumpkin said in a statement. “We are very pleased to work with SnagFilms to serve the nonfiction community and our respective missions.”

In addition to announcing the alliance between SnagFilms and the IDA, earlier this week SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen announced milestones reached by SnagFilms since its launch in July 2008, including:

• SnagFilms widgets have appeared on more than 300 million web pages;
• Over 1.5 million movies have been streamed;
• More than 20,000 “affiliates” having opened “virtual theaters” with SnagFilms content embedded in widgets on their pages;
• The SnagFilms library now contains 600 documentary films.

Additionally, SnagFilms announced that it would work Hulu, the online video site, to provide content for a new documentary channel. SnagFilms also participated in the joint premiere of the documentary film The Least of These, which was shown to a theater audience at the SXSW festival, and simultaneously made available to the online audience via SnagFilms. The joint premiere marks the third instance in which a film has been introduced simultaneously at a film festival and on SnagFilms.com.

Media Contact
SnagFilms
Noah Black
202-295-8797
noah@snagfilms.com

International Documentary Association
Michael Lumpkin
213-534-3600 x7485
michael@documentary.org

About IDA
The International Documentary Association is a nonprofit, public interest organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the art of documentary film and video, founded in 1982. The organization publishes a quarterly magazine, Documentary, and online at www.documentary.org. IDA programs include the DocuWeek Theatrical Showcase, the annual IDA Documentary Awards, and the Documentary Nominees Reception for the Academy Awards.

About SnagFilms
SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of hundreds of award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film production and distribution, including PBS, National Geographic, Sundance Preserve, IndiePix, Peter Jennings Productions, Arts Alliance America, ITVS, Koch Lorber Films, Cactus Three, and many others. Many of the most prominent documentary filmmakers are participating not only by having their films distributed via SnagFilms, but by engaging with their audience through blogs and offering special "bonus" material, as well as suggesting nonprofit organizations that viewers motivated by these films can link to and support via charitable contributions, volunteering or spreading the word.

Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms virtual movie theater widgets have been embedded into over 300 million webpages, including websites for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Politico, and hundreds of blogs and thousands of social network pages like Facebook. OVGuide named SnagFilms a Top Site of 2008.

The company was founded by digital entrepreneur, documentary film producer, sports entrepreneur, and philanthropist Ted Leonsis, and is additionally backed by AOL co-founder and Revolution LLC Chairman, Steve Case, philanthropist and former digital executive Jean Case, and operating executive and philanthropic venture capitalist Miles Gilburne.

As part of its one-year anniversary, free video streaming site Hulu has been thanking its growing viewers with a series of Fan Appreciation events.

Since March 12, the site has been spotlighting more episodes of favorite series, new shows and movies and social networking functions. Today, the surprise was the launch of a special Documentaries section.

New titles in the section include Super Size Me, Confessions of a Superhero, DIG!, Buena Vista Social Club, and more. They even went old-school and featured a text Q&A with Morgan Spurlock to commemorate the event.

Morgan digs the site, saying in the Q&A: "Hulu is fantastic. One of the things I always say about it is that's consistent, and the quality of the player and images are amazing. And it's starting to push other content on the backs of the NBC and Fox shows that made it a destination. The reach of Hulu and what it's accomplished so far--name recognition, quality programming--is remarkable."

A majority of the films come via a new relationship with SnagFilms, which added Hulu as a distribution partner providing portions of its video library.

SnagFilms brings the best nonfiction films to the web audience, promotes viral web distribution through virtual movie theater widgets, and engages viewers to assist in charitable and community efforts. "SnagFilms was created to make more great films available to the broadest possible audience. Now with Hulu we can delight viewers on one of the Internet's most-visited video sites with a growing set of documentaries from our large library, and deepen the already broad set of entertainment choices that Hulu offers," said Rick Allen CEO of SnagFilms in a press release.

In addition to featuring documentary films selected from Snag Films' library of 600 films, the Hulu documentary channel will provide viewers with access to regular bonus content including, "Behind the Camera," a question-and-answer feature with select documentary filmmakers. "'Behind the Camera,' will give viewers a never before seen look into documentary films and help viewers understand what drives documentary filmmakers to do what they do," added Rick Allen.

The relationship only furthers the reach of docs, supports a model that gets the filmmakers paid and makes sharing the content as easy as, well, this: