To Shoot An Elephant, CC BY-SA Documentary, Wins Award at Festival dei Popoli

Cameron Parkins, November 20th, 2009

Last week To Shoot An Elephant, a CC Attribution-Share Alike licensed documentary on life in the Gaza Strip, won the award for “Most Innovative Filmmaker” at Florence’s Festival dei Popoli. From the voting committee:

“After we watched this film we engaged in a long passionate discussion. This film never left us. We want to award the filmmakers for sharing with us an emotional, physical and stressful experience for being there and witnessing the horrors and destruction of the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip earlier this year.”

It is wonderful to see open source cinema receive these types of accolades, solidifying its place in the larger film landscape. Congratulations to film-makers Alberto Arce and Mohammed Rujailah on their win! You can learn more about To Shoot An Elephant at their website.

Remix NYC: Get Your Face In The Opening NYC Screening of “Rip! A Remix Manifesto”

Cameron Parkins, June 8th, 2009

Times Square, J Gutierrez | CC BY

June is turning into quite the month for the NYC CC-community with both a CC Salon and the Open Video Conference taking place. For added enjoyment, Open Source Cinema just announced Remix NYC, a digital celebration to commemorate the theatrical opening of Rip! A Remix Manifesto at the Cinema Village in New York on June 19th.

The premise is simple – edit yourself in place of the advertisements that are abound in Javier Gutierrez’s Times Square (pictured above) and upload it back to OSC’s site for inclusion in the film. The final product will be an animated version of image where the billboards are slowly replaced by free culture activists.

Unbelievably cool but you have a short time to get your photos in as the deadline is June 14th – visit Remix NYC for all the details.

“RiP: A Remix Manifesto” Released, Online Remixing Through Kaltura

Cameron Parkins, March 23rd, 2009

RiP: A Remix Manifesto, a community-driven documentary that focuses on copyright and remix culture (covered earlier here and here) is just beginning to creep out into theaters, having its U.S. premier last week at SXSW. While the film largely focuses on the story of Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) it includes interviews with a wide variety of figures, including both Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow.

Perhaps most interesting is that the filmmakers have teamed up with open source video platform Kaltura (early coverage here) enabling anyone with a computer to remix the film only at opersourcecinema.org. All the footage of the film is released under a CC BY-NC license.

Trailer for “RiP: A Remix Manifesto” Released

Cameron Parkins, October 20th, 2008

The new trailer for RiP: A Remix Manifesto – the Girl Talk featuring, community edited documentary that focuses on copyright and remix culture – was posted online recently and looks to be coming along excellently. The trailer features clips with Greg Gillis, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, and a slew of other big names in the copyright/remix world. From Opensource Cinema:

Imagine a world where ideas and culture, from “Happy Birthday” to Mickey Mouse, are horded under lock and key by copyright laws. Even ideas that could lead to a cure for cancer would be off-limits. Stop imagining now, because this is the world you live in. Although pop culture giants such as Walt Disney and the Rolling Stones built on the past to produce their art, the door is closing behind them.

I’ve been making a documentary for over 6 years that explores this issue: RiP: A Remix Manifesto.

Digital technology has opened up an unprecedented global economy of ideas. RiP explores the robber barons and revolutionaries squaring off across this new frontier as the film journeys from the hallways of Washington to the favelas of Brazil. Our central protagonist is Gregg Gillis, the Pittsburgh biomedical engineer who moonlights as Girl Talk, a mash-up artist rearranging the pop charts’ DNA with his incongruous entirely sample based songs. Along the way, I met key figures on the complexities of intellectual property in the digital era, among them Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, culture critic Cory Doctorow, Brazilian musician and Minister of Cultural Affairs Gilberto Gil, and Jammie Thomas, the single mom successfully sued by the RIAA for illegal downloading.

Footage from the film is being continuously posted to RiP’s remix site for viewers to see an remix – similarly the soundtrack is being created collaboratively online by the ccMixter community.

Call for Soundtrack: RIP A Remixer’s Manifesto

Victor Stone, September 9th, 2008

Creative Commons and the makers of the independent film currently in production RIP: A Remixer’s Manifesto a co-production between Montreal-based production house Eye Steel Film and the National Film Board of Canada are making a Call for Soundtracks. The film itself is released under a CC license and has been produced collaboratively through hundreds of submissions and remixes at Open Source Cinema.

A mashup in its own right, RIP tackles the issue of Fair Use ─ broadly defined as the limited use of copyrighted material without requiring the permission of the rights holders ─ on its own uncertain ground. Pulling footage from a range of sources, filmmaker Brett Gaylor looks at cultural appropriation throughout history, from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones to the king of the remix, Walt Disney. With legal advice from Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Brett negotiates the tricky world of fair-use filmmaking.

Now the producers and CC are using ccMixter to host a Call for Soundtracks hoping to finish the music soundtrack for the film using remixes made from CC Attribution licensed source material. Instructions and details can be found at ccMixter.