Who can tell us what the first Oscar-winning film to be shared under a CC license was? #ccfilm #oscars

— creativecommons (@creativecommons) February 25, 2013

And the Oscar goes to… RT @alanthall: @creativecommons Was it “A story of healing”? (More info: bit.ly/UIhDxL)

— creativecommons (@creativecommons) February 25, 2013

In 2007, Donna Dewey’s A Story of Healing became the first Academy Award–winning film to be released under a Creative Commons license. The film follows plastic surgeons from Interplast, an organization that provides free reconstructive surgery to people with injuries and congenital deformities. Interplast (which produced the film and is now known as ReSurge International), recognized that sharing it under a CC license could allow its message to reach more people.

Sita Sings the Blues / Nina Paley / CC0

Six years later, filmmakers all around the world are using Creative Commons licenses to bring their films to new audiences. And in the process, many of them are redefining how film production and distribution can work. No, CC-licensed films aren’t sweeping the Oscars, but maybe they’ve become a part of something even more exciting.

For example, take Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. Most people reading this blog post have probably seen Paley’s amazing film. (If you haven’t, watch it right now. We’ll be here when you get back.) But you might not know that as of 2013, Paley has placed her film in the public domain. Paley explains why she made the unorthodox decision to waive her copyright under the CC0 Public Domain Declaration:

… I still believe in all the reasons for BY-SA, but the reality is I would never, ever sue anyone over SSTB or any cultural work. I will still publicly condemn abuses like enclosure and willful misattribution, but why point a loaded gun at everyone when I’d never fire it? CC0 is an acknowledgement I’ll never go legal on anyone, no matter how abusive and evil they are.

Gottfrid Svartholm (from TPB AFK) / Simon Klose / CC BY

A few weeks ago, Simon Klose released TPB AFK, the long-awaited, Kickstarter-funded documentary about the lives and legal difficulties of the founders of The Pirate Bay. Klose released two versions of the documentary, one licensed BY-NC-ND and one BY-NC-SA. According to Klose, the film includes six minutes of footage from a television network that wouldn’t allow adaptations, so he chose to release a remix-friendly version omitting that footage alongside the NoDerivs version. Both in Klose’s case and in Paley’s, the licenses invite types of reuse and creative participation that can get really problematic under traditional, All Rights Reserved film distribution.

This summer, members of the Nordic CC community are organizing the first Nordic Creative Commons Film Festival. Organizers are inviting anyone in the region to host a screening. Venues will range from full-size theatres to small gatherings in people’s homes. (The organizers are currently looking both for volunteer organizers and for film submissions. Visit their website for more information.)

The Nordic festival is the latest in a growing movement of CC film festivals that began with the Barcelona Creative Commons Film Festival. The BccN launched in 2010 with the slogan “COPY THIS FESTIVAL.” And copy it people did, with “copies” appearing in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Lima, Helsinki, and beyond.

In a video message to the organizers of the Nordic CC Film Festival, CC cofounder Lawrence Lessig suggests that the film culture of the future will look less like today’s film industry and more like this festival:

Another new direction in filmmaking — which, interestingly, also originated in Spain — is Pablo Maqueda and Haizea Viana’s #littlesecretfilm. Anyone can create a “#littlesecretfilm,” as long as her film follows a list of minimalistic rules (finish shooting in 24 hours, ad-libbed dialogue). It’s hard not to make comparisons to Dogme 95, but #littlesecretfilm’s organizers stress that they’re not trying to build a new movement (interview in Spanish). The project’s manifesto describes it simply as “an act of love for the cinema,” which could also describe the global spread of CC film festivals. And of course, #littlesecretfilms must be licensed under Creative Commons.

Around the world, CC filmmakers and festival organizers are changing the rules of every step in the process of filmmaking, from writing and shooting to editing, distribution, and monetization. At a time when the mainstream film industry is struggling to redefine and modernize itself, the CC community isn’t waiting up.

Attention CC filmmakers: Please add your projects to our Case Studies and post upcoming screenings to our Events page. We’d love to help promote your work!

Update (April 11, 2013): The Nordic Creative Commons Film Festival has just launched a crowdfunding campaign. Make a donation or visit the festival site to find other ways to get involved.

Related

• Open Video Course Sprint in Berlin for School of Open
• Interview: Global Lives Project
• Featured platform: Vimeo
• CC-Licensed Documentary Explores Personality Rights Issues
• Find more films on our curated Kickstarter page.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal posted a fascinating article on the profits made by Nina Paley for her film Sita Sings The Blues. Widely available for free online under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, Sita has garnered $55,000 to date, an impressive amount for a film that has spent nothing on promotion or adverting.

While this amount only conveys part of the story – the article leaves out the cost to make the film as well as Paley’s cost-of-living – it is inspiring to see such fiscal success from a work of open-cinema. Aurelia Schultz, current CC legal research volunteer, digs deeper with the numbers on her blog, making the following observation:

A better tally of how [Paley] has done would include how the Sita copyright issue and subsequent CC licensing have increased Nina’s income from her other works by increasing her visibility; how much she makes from speaking engagements (which she say are her most lucrative work); and how much more she would have paid out under her settlement agreement had she released the film in a more traditional manner. Since all of these things only add to what she has already made, it’s clear that releasing Sita under a Creative Commons license was a good choice for Nina.

For more information on Sita Sings the Blues be sure to read our interview with Nina Paley as well as check out our case study on the film itself.

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Paley about the film – we touched on the film’s aesthetics and plot points, but perhaps most interesting to those in the CC community is Paley’s decision to utilize our copyleft license, Attribution-ShareAlike, and her thoughts on free licensing and the open source movement in general. Read on to learn more about the licensing trials and tribulations associated with the film’s release, how CC has played a role, and Paley’s opinions on the Free Culture movement as a whole.

RamSitaGods, Nina Paley | CC BY-SA

One of the major stories surrounding Sita Sings The Blues been your use of songs by musician Annette Hanshaw and the back-and-forth dialogue you have had with the copyright owners as a result. Can you explain why you used these songs?

The songs themselves inspired the film. There would be no film without those songs. Until I heard them, the Ramayana was just another ancient Indian epic to me. I was feebly connecting this ancient epic to my own experiences in 2002. But the Hanshaw songs were a revelation: Sita’s story has been told a million times not just in India, not just through the Ramayana, but also through American Blues. Hers is a story so primal, so basic to human experience, it has been told by people who never heard of the Ramayana. The Hanshaw songs deal with exactly the same themes as the epic; but they emerged completely independent of it. Their sound is distinctively 1920′s American, and therein lies their power: the listener/viewer knows I didn’t make them up. They are authentic. They are historical evidence supporting the film’s central point: the story of the Ramayana transcends time, place and culture.

What is this story? Sita is a goddess/princess/woman utterly devoted to her husband Rama, the god/prince/man. Sita’s story moves from total enmeshment and romantic joy (Here We Are, What Wouldn’t I Do For That Man) to hopeful longing separation (Daddy Won’t You Please Come Home) to reunion (Who’s That Knockin’ At My Door) to romantic rejection (Mean to Me) to reconciliation (If You Want the Rainbow) to further rejection (Moanin’ Low, Am I Blue) to hopeless longing (Lover Come Back to Me,) back to love – this time self-love (I’ve Got a Feelin’ I’m Fallin’).

Sita’s role is to suffer, especially through loving a man who rejects her. Women especially connect emotionally to her story and these emotions are clearly expressed in songs. As Nabaneeta Dev Sen writes in “Lady sings the Blues: When Women retell the Ramayana”:

But there are always alternative ways of using a myth. If patriarchy has used the Sita myth to silence women, the village women have picked up the Sita myth to give themselves a voice. They have found a suitable mask in the myth of Sita, a persona through which they can express themselves, speak of their day-to-day problems, and critique patriarchy in their own fashion.

Sen is talking about the songs of Indian village women, but she could just as easily been talking about American Blues. That is the point of Sita Sings the Blues: we all struggle with this story, which connects humans through time, space and culture, whether we’re aware of it or not. Just as the Ramayana has mostly been written down and controlled by men, the songs in Sita Sings the Blues were mostly written by men; but sung by a woman – Hanshaw – they pack an emotional wallop and express a woman’s voice.

The synchronicity of the Hanshaw songs and Sita’s story is uncanny. This impresses audiences and allows the film’s point to be made: the story of the Ramayana transcends time, place and culture. Because the songs feature an authentic voice from the 1920′s, they demonstrate that this story emerged organically in history. New songs composed by the director, while they could be entertaining, could not make that point. They would be a mere contrivance, whereas the authentic, historical songs give weight to the film’s thesis. They are in fact the basis of the film’s thesis, irrefutable evidence that certain stories – like the story of Sita and Rama – are inherent to human experience.

Upon reading the above, Karl Fogel added:

Using something that already exists demonstrates that the universality of your theme is external to yourself. Whereas causing something new to exist wouldn’t achieve the same effect. Instead, it would be circular: it would demonstrate that the artist has the ability to make more of what she’s already making. So rather than being connective or expanding, it would be narcissistic (just in a descriptive sense, not necessarily a pejorative one).

There has to be a reason so many composers, even non-Catholic ones like Bach, set the Latin Mass to music instead of making up their own words. (Hmm, now imagine if those words had been monopoly-restricted… :-) ).

What has your experience been in trying to get permission it use Hanshaw’s music in the film, and the current state of affairs?

Because distributors were going bankrupt right and left in 2008, it was no longer possible to sell an indie film to a distributor for big money and then “have them take care of” the licenses. Since in February of 2008, when the film premiered in Berlin, I was not yet a Free Culture convert, I thought I needed a conventional distributor. So it fell on me to clear the rights. I had to pay intermediaries to contact the license holders, since they don’t speak to mere riff raff like me; they’re too busy, and under no obligation to do so. Even before that, I needed legal help to research who owned the rights in the first place, since there’s no central copyright registry any more, and rights are traded like baseball cards between corporations. Luckily, I was aided by the student attorneys of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic of American University.

Anyway, in 2008 a lawyer charged me $7,000 to get this response from the licensors: an estimate of $15,000 to $26,000 per song, AFTER I’d paid a $500 per song Festival License. (Festival Licenses last one whole year and require a promise to not make any money showing the film. So a festival license isn’t enough to get the “week-long commercial run” required for Academy Award qualification. Now that “Sita”‘s been broadcast, she will never qualify for an Academy nomination; if I’d really wanted one, I would have had to delayed the release of the film for another year. But I digress.).

Even though we made it explicitly clear the entire budget for the film was under $200,000, the licensors came back with the “bargain” estimate of about $220,000. It was simply not possible for me to acquire that kind of money. So legally, my only option was to not show the film or commit civil disobedience.

I hired another intermediary, a “rights clearance house” which is less expensive than a lawyer, and they negotiated the “step deal” I eventually signed. This brought the price tag of the licenses down to $50,000, but with many restrictions. If more than 5,000 DVDs (or downloads) are sold, I must pay the licensors more. I wrote about this at length on my website.

I borrowed $50,000 to pay these licenses for several reasons. First, to reduce my liability. I may still be sued for releasing the film freely online – after all, the licensors may interpret free sharing as “selling” for zero dollars – but I’ll only be sued for breach of contract, not copyright infringement. Copyright infringement carries much harsher penalties, including possible jail time. I also wanted to make free sharing of “Sita” as legal, and therefore legitimate, as possible. Sharing shouldn’t be the exclusive purview of lawbreakers. Sharing should – and can – be wholesome fun for the whole family. I paid up to indemnify the audience, because the audience is Sita’s main distributor.

So it’s now legal to copy and share Sita Sings the Blues. The files went up on Archive.org in early March 2009 and have spread far and wide since. Having paid off the licensors, I could have chosen conventional distribution. But I chose a CC BY-SA license to allow the film to reach a much wider audience; to prohibit the copyrighting – “locking up” – of my art; to give back to the greater culture which gave to me; to exploit the power of the audience to promote and distribute more efficiently than a conventional distributor; and to educate about the dangers of copy restrictions, and the beauty and benefits of sharing.

As a result of the trouble you’ve had in regards to Annete Hanshaw’s music, you have turned into a self-proclaimed Free Culture activist. Was this shift gradual? What has that experience in particular informed your views on copyright, fair use, and the public domain?

Annette Hanshaw was immensely popular in the late 1920′s. Now almost no one’s heard of her. Why? Because of copy-restrictions.

I met many talented filmmakers on my “festival circuit.” Most had conventional distribution deals, but it’s very hard to see any of their films, which had small, brief theatrical runs, and then were never heard from again. Why? Copy-restrictions.

I’m an artist. I need money to live, but even more importantly I need my art to reach people. A $10,000 advance in return for having my work locked up for 10 years is a devil’s bargain. More than anything, I wanted people to see my film – now and in years to come.

My turning point in choosing a CC license happened in October of 2008. “Sita” had just opened the San Francisco Animation Festival, and I’d disclosed to the audience we’d all just done something illegal. It’s always great to share the film on a big screen in a theater with an audience, and this one was particularly enthusiastic. The next morning I woke up realizing that a free release online wouldn’t in any way prevent theatrical screenings. Why had I never considered that before? Because the film industry insists people won’t go to theaters if they can see a film online. But that’s not true of me, nor many cinephiles. When I lived in San Francisco my favorite movie outings were to classic films at the Catsro: 2001, Nights of Cabiria, Modern Times, Mommy Dearest. These are all available on home video, but I went to the Castro for the big screen and the dark room and the shared experience. If enough people watched and liked “Sita” online, there’d be demand for it in cinemas. And so far that’s proving true.

In particular, how have you viewed CC licenses in this whole process? What was your motivation to release Sita Sings the Blues under a CC BY-SA license? Why did you choose that license and not another CC license? What are the obstacles and benefits you’ve seen in using CC licenses?

I want my film to reach the widest audience. It costs money to run a theater; it costs money to manufacture DVDs; it costs money to make and distribute 35mm film prints. It’s essential I allow people to make money distributing Sita these ways and others; otherwise, no one will do it. So I eschewed the “non commercial” license. Share Alike would “protect” the work from ever being locked up. It’s better than Public Domain; works are routinely removed from the Public Domain via privatized derivatives (just try making your own Pinocchio). I didn’t want some corporation locking up a play or TV show based on Sita. They are certainly welcome to make derivative works, and make money from them; in fact I encourage this. But they may not sue or punish anyone for sharing those works.

I looked to the Free Software movement as a model. The CC BY-SA license most closely resembles the GNU GPL, which is the foundation of Free Software. People make plenty of money in Free Software; there’s no reason they can’t do the same in Free Culture, except for those pernicious “non commercial” licenses. A Share Alike license eliminates the corporate abuse everyone’s so afraid of, while it encourages entrepreneurship and innovation. Everyone wins, especially the artist!

What else would you like our reader’s to know? Any plans for the future?

I’d love you all to read my essay Understanding Free Content and of course watch the film!

I’m currently busy making “containers” like DVDs and T shirts available now at our e-store. QuestionCopyright is my main partner in releasing Sita; we’re trying to prove a model in which freedom and revenue work together. We know other filmmakers are watching what happens to Sita, and we’d like to show that yes, you can make money without impinging on everyone else’s freedom.

I’m also negotiating with theatrical distributors in France and Switzerland, as well as a couple book publishers. I’m negotiating not “rights” to the film, which belong to everyone already, but rather my Endorsement and assistance. To understand how this works, please read about the Creator Endorsed Mark.

Once I have the Sita Sings the Blues Merchandise Empire started, I hope to work on short musical cartoons about free speech – you can hear one of the songs here. There’s more where that came from. Really, I have more ideas than I have time to implement them – a happy yet vexing problem.

I also hope to have all my old Nina’s Adventures and Fluff syndicated comic strips scanned and uploaded at high resolution onto archive.org under a CC BY-SA license. The University of Illinois Library is currently seeking funding to move ahead on this project – interested individuals should contact Betsy Kruger.

Lastly, I’m still looking for money, although the Sita Sings the Blues Merchandise Empire should be generating some in a few months. Still, I plan to apply for grants and fellowships. Any foundations with too much money burning a hole in your accounts, please get in touch.

Nina Paley, anonymous | CC BY-SA

Dear Audience,

I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.

You don’t need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom. …

Nina’s film retells the classic Indian myth Ramayana and has already received critical acclaim from the NYTimes, Rogert Ebert who gave it two thumbs up, and many others. On March 7th, it was broadcast on PBS/WNET and is now available streaming on thirteen.org.

Check out SitaSingstheBlues.com for more information, download links, and of course, a wiki.