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Fair Use Goes International: Israel

The highlight of my trip to the high-energy, high-touch DocAviv Documentary Film Festival was an open workshop on copyright and documentary, attended by about 35 filmmakers and a few lawyers. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but Israeli documentary filmmakers are just as frustrated and confused as U.S. makers used to be about what copyrighted material they must license and what they can just use. They’re just as eager to figure it out, and they’ve suddenly become poster children for Fair Use outside the U.S. Israeli law was just changed to incorporate U.S.-style Fair Use. Read more...

Fair Use on Trial, and Knowledge Wins

Chicago filmmaker Floyd Webb wanted to make a movie about a colorful martial arts figure, who called himself Counte Dante (http://johnkeehan.blogspot.com/). The grandmaster of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, William V. Aguiar III, tried to stop him by blocking his access to images of Counte Dante and material from his training video. Read more...

An Interview with Peter Davis, director of Hearts and Minds

Peter Davis, an Emmy/Peabody Award winner, made waves in the documentary film world with his 1974 film about Vietnam, Hearts and Minds. This incendiary film caused great controversy at the time, and has since become regarded as one of the most grippingly honest films about the Vietnam War ever made.

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Fair Use Goes International

American creators who produce for the international marketplace—and that means most documentarians these days—complain that Fair Use doesn’t cross national borders gracefully. They’re right.
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