Tarantino and Peckinpah aren’t “Outlaw Filmmakers;” the people who make fan films, now those are outlaws, riding hell-for-leather all over copyright and intellectual property law! You know Quentin never risked going to jail to make a movie, but fan filmmakers have no choice but to go rogue if they want to practice their art.
Of course, if you’re gonna break the rules, you gotta know what they are, but most fan filmmakers don’t know much about IP law—mainly because it’s boring as hell. Which is where this month’s contest comes in:
Fan Cinema Today is giving away THREE DVDs of the awesome documentary, RiP: A Remix Manifesto!
Coming to stores on June 30, the flick is about copyright law and IP, but it’s more than that: It’s about music, mashups, fan edits, DJ culture, your rights, the cure for cancer and the evil that corporations do. Most of all, it’s not boring!
To make their case, the filmmakers take you from the slums of Brazil to the rave tent at Coachella, to the taxicabs of China, to the crowds at Disneyland, to a photoshoot for Playgirl and more. How many movies do you know that feature appearances by both the head registrar at the US Copyright office and Paris Hilton? It’s a fun, fast-paced flick that entertains while explaining the problems of copyright in today’s world. I don’t agree with all the filmmakers’ ideas, but they make some good points—plus it has a good beat and you can dance to it (seriously).
HOW TO ENTER: It’s jaw-droppingly simple. Drop me a line via the “Contact” button up in the top right corner of this page. Send in your name, email, name your favorite fan film, and say something about why it’s your favorite. The contest ends at Midnight, Friday, June 26, and I’ll pick the winners at random. You must live in North America to enter (apologies to Andrew Smith of illegibleme.com).
In the meantime, the movie’s press release explains it far better than I ever could, so here’s more dirt on RiP:
OFFICIAL SELECTION – SXSW Film Festival
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“About as edgy and fascinating a glimpse as you’ll get into one of the more pressing issues of our Internet Age.”- Montreal Gazette
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“The sexiest film about copyright infringement I’ve ever seen.”- CBC
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RiP! A REMIX MANIFESTO
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Following Rave Reviews From North American Theatrical Runs, This Innovative, Mashed-Up Arthouse Favorite Shattering the Wall Between Media Users and Producers Will Debut June 30 on Loaded DVD for $24.95SRP. Jam Packed With Over 90 Minutes of Bonus Features, Including Favorite Mash-Up Videos From OpenSourceCinema.org, Deleted Theatrical Scenes and More!
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NEW YORK, NY – A true movie for the digital age, RiP! A REMIX MANIFESTO is an innovative, surprisingly raucous and energetic documentary exploring the complexities of intellectual property in the era of peer-to-peer file sharing. An audience favorite at film festivals worldwide, this movie-as-mash-up shatters the wall between users and producers, as web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor invites audiences to remix his raw footage (at opensourcecinema.org), allowing them to become part of the film itself. An Official Selection at SXSW 2009 and the Audience Choice selection at Amsterdam’s International Doc Festival and the Whistler Film Fest, RiP! A REMIX MANIFESTO makes its DVD debut on June 30 for $24.95SRP.
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The innovative DVD also offers over 90 minutes of exclusive bonus footage unavailable anywhere else. Included are deleted theatrical scenes featuring nearly an hour of Professor Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons and Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, author of “Remix”, “Code V2″ and “Free Culture” and one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries, discussing free culture (55:16) and “Lawyer’s Reaction to Film” (1:22), among others; and, nearly 30 minutes of mash-up favorites from OpenSourceCinema.org and beyond, including “George Bush – Bushwacked (State of the Union Remix)”, “Olio – Remix Culture Video”, “Girl Talk – Ryan Edit”, “Girl Talk – Rotoscoped”, “Who Is Girl Talk”, “Girl Talk Photo Montage” and “Steamboat Mickey”.
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Called “a true work of art that relies on the remix technique at the center of its discussion1″, RiP! A REMIX MANIFESTO embraces the debate on accessibility, copyright infringement and artistic freedom and truly challenges the thresholds of fair use. To explore the intricacies, filmmaker Gaylor interviews key figures in the ongoing debate including Lessig; Cory Doctorow, technology activist and co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing; world-renowned musician, web proselytizer and former Brazilian Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil; U.S. Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters; The Mouse Liberation Front and the film’s central protagonist, Gregg Gillis, the Pittsburgh biomedical engineer who moonlights as Girl Talk, a mash-up musician, rearranging the pop charts’ DNA with his incongruous, entirely sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy?
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While the film offers an intelligent look back at the colorful history of copyright laws, it also illustrates the current simplicity with which digital tracks can be lifted from one source and placed in another. A participatory media experiment from its inception, “RiP!,” says Gaylor “is an attempt to move beyond the traditional relationship of producer and consumer – we want to recognize that this passive era is over…and that the film remains an evolving conversation about intellectual property in the digital age.”
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