How Do You Know It's Love? Because it's from the Prelinger Archive

How Do You Know It's Love? (dir. Ted Peshak, 1950 - Coronet Instructional Films), here in a YouTube version with commentary by Josh Way. The full-length version, thankfully without the mocking voiceover, Mystery Science Theater 3000-style, is available at the Internet Archive as part of the Prelinger Archives. Sadly, it couldn't be embedded in this post.

What is love in this digital age, ponders Film Studies For Free on this fine Valentine's Day morn? Plenty of answers to that question, as well as to others of equal and greater import, are freely accessible at the Internet Archive, courtesy of the Prelinger Archives' treasure trove of Coronet Instructional Films.

The video embedded above is an adorable teen-example of Coronet's instructional genre, but also see Dating: Do's and Don'ts, Marriage Is a Partnership, Are You Popular?, Going Steady? and Communism:

Coronet Instructional Films were shown in American schools starting in about 1941. The company was an offshoot of Coronet Magazine, a digest-sized magazine that itself was owned by Esquire, Inc. Owner David Smart was deeply interested in visual education and the power of the film to teach and convince, and built a full studio on his estate in Glenview, Illinois, where at its height hundreds of films were cranked out each year. The films were sold to schools and libraries by a network of distributors and were quite successful -- in 1976 Coronet celebrated its sale of 1 million prints.

The archive collection that has publicly offered up these online video versions of the Coronet Films truly merits, and has won, Film Studies For Free's undying love. Indeed, the Prelinger Archives are ones that have been painstakingly built up as a labour of love for and devotion to otherwise rarely preserved films. The Internet Archive stores digitized versions of over 2,000 key titles from the collection for free downloading and reuse - an amazing resource for academics and all those fascinated by the crazy hinterland of the mainstream film world.

For a fascinating account of how writer, archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger set up his collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films, see A Short History of Prelinger Archives, Part I . You should also experience Rick Prelinger's Panorama Ephemera at Vectors Journal. And if you'd like to be as inspired by Prelinger's digital and other activism as FSFF is, then watch the two videos below. As for this (very platonically-) enamoured blog, it sends a dozen, red e-roses though the blogosphere to the rather fabulous (and very well partnered) Mr Prelinger, in admiration of all his valuable work.

'Interview in San Francisco, April 2007. Here, Rick Prelinger explains why he used the films from his collection to form the biggest moving image archive on the internet. He talks of his offline library, and how all the above relates to the matter of serendipity in a query-driven information environment.'

'San Francisco, April 2007. Here, Prelinger underlines how innovative technology opens up new visions of the possible, but stresses that its ultimate effect is contingent on other factors. Many media platforms simply die and are not heard from again. Regarding copyright, Rick describes its emergence from an esoteric subject to a consumer issue, but emphasizes that from the point of view of cultural production, access to original materials will go on being more important than copyright issues in most cases. In closing, he calls for a dialogue between users and producers of culture, to establish a new compact.'

A Good News Day

Film Studies For Free is happy today for lots of reasons but one of the two chief explanations is that there has been a positive development in the case that this blog has been harping on about for a wee while now (see Shooting Down YouTube: Bring Back Kevin Lee's Videos! and L'Affaire Lee: follow up links).

Today, Kevin Lee announced on his blog that:

Thanks to the Copyright Team at YouTube for getting into the spirit of Martin Luther King Day, and agreeing to temporarily reinstate my account while my counterclaim against INA over the fair use of “…And God Created Woman” is under review. And thank you EVERYONE for your emails and messages of support, and for those who wrote about my ordeal on their respective websites. The publicity surrounding this mess had everything to do with YouTube contacting me last Friday and offering guidance on what steps I needed to take to get my account back online (at the time I didn’t know how I could still file a counterclaim despite [the fact] that I was shut out of my account).

A temporary respite only, it should be noted, but at least it means that Lee's YouTube channel is mostly back online, including many videos that weren't in dispute at all (OK, OK... So FSFF knows that it's not the most serious instance of collective punishment going on in the world right now but it certainly was a disproportionate response in its own way...). Lee has also posted the putative 'offending' video (Shooting Down Pictures #932: And God Created Woman) on Veoh.com, so check it out there, along with three other great video essays of his (Hour of the Star, O Lucky Man, and Seventh Heaven).

Now Film Studies For Free is off to find a television set to which it can glue itself gleefully for the rest of the day, but please feel free to enjoy this link in its absence.

Shooting Down YouTube: Bring Back Kevin Lee's Videos!

Today is a b a d d a y for free online film studies, as Karina Longworth and Matt Zoller Seitz have both ably reported.

And thus it's a pretty terrible day for Film Studies For Free.

You see, dear readers, there are holes in this here blog, gaping ones where Kevin B. Lee's marvellous video essays used to be embedded. Innocently. Not for financial profit. Solely for your film-educational betterment... such is Film Studies For Free's humble raison d'être .

As FSFF informed its readers last November in its Online Film Audio-Commentaries and Video Essays Of Note posting:

Lee is a filmmaker and multimedia producer based in New York City. Shooting Down Pictures primarily serves as a repository for a wide variety of materials connected with his project of viewing every film on the list of 1000 greatest films of all time, as compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? Rather than simply writing about, or gathering pre-existing resources together for these films -- both of which Lee does brilliantly, it must be said -- he also makes video essays about them and commissions others to provide their own audio commentaries, including ones by such luminaries as Nicole Brenez, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Richard Brody, Karina Longworth, Andy Horbal, Mike D'Angelo, Matt Zoller Seitz, Preston Miller, Vadim Rizov, and Girish Shambu.

Yesterday, in Uh oh… Storm’s brewing… and The Storm has Hit, Lee informed his loyal readers that his YouTube account, where the videos were publicly archived, had been 'permanently disabled' due to an INA (presumably Institut national de l'audiovisuel?) claim that the following material was infringing copyright: Video Essay for 932. Et dieu… crea la femme / …And God Created Woman (1956, Roger Vadim). It seems that YouTube has removed all 70 of Lee's videos, including 40 of his original video essays.

As Karina Longworth writes on SPOUTblog, 'Kevin has his own personal archive and can potentially re-upload the clips; he says he’ll investigate other online video sharing options. But YouTube is still the biggest game in town, and Kevin says he’ll miss it' and especially '"the right to share my work in the first place.”'

As Film Studies For Free's normal stock in trade is cheerful and positive commentary, it doesn't usually find itself getting angry. But this news made it fume, and sent it off to the e-barricades!

It couldn't agree more with some of the readers' comments about YouTube's actions, linked to Longworth's post, which are, therefore, worth citing here.

• Glenn Kenny of Some Came Running wrote: 'Talk about kicking the wheels off the cart, and then shooting the horse. Kevin’s critical essays probably netted no small amount of income for the copyright holders by turning people on to films they might not have otherwise bothered with.'
  
• Bill Georgiaris of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? adds: 'It’s YouTube’s random attempts at abiding by copyright laws that makes their overall ‘control process’ laughable. Kevin’s insightful little essays ‘pinching’ a minute here and a minute there (mostly from films most people aren’t interested in anyway) get the boot, yet you can log on and watch Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” (along with many other well-known films) in its entirety!'

Perhaps quite hopefully, though, 'Theodore' of Serious Business noted: 'I have a lot of my own found footage films on YouTube, in which I use a lot of copywritten works. After I received a copyright notice, I sent a letter of dispute explaining why my work falls under the “fair use” category. YouTube gives you the option to do this. Soon after, YouTube put the video backup on their site.'

Film Studies For Free wishes to express its solidarity with Kevin and really hopes that something can be worked out quickly to get his inspirational video essays back online. But its readers might like to join with it as it prepares itself for what will almost certainly be a much longer fight in defence of Fair Use, and in the pursuit of more Open Culture and more Open Access scholarship.

In the spirit of the above, please check out the following really useful links on Fair Use:

• The comments to Matt Zoller Seitz's post "Copy Rites: YouTube vs. Kevin B. Lee"
• Kristin Thompson's important 2008 post Fair is still fair, and more so at Observations on film art and FILM ART
• Center for Social Media’s “Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use” (2005) and its follow-up on the statement’s impact (cited by Thompson)
• "The Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Best Practices for Fair Use in Teaching for Film and Media Educators,” in Cinema Journal Volume 47, no. 2 (2008) or onlineHERE (also cited by Thompson)
• Henry Jenkins' great 2008 post Fans, Fair Use, and Transformation
• The Organization for Transformative Works (cited by Jenkins).
• Patricia Aufderheide's brilliant 2008 post Political Remixers and Fair Use Best Practices (also cited by Jenkins).
• New York remix artist Jonathan McIntosh's Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video (cited by Aufderheide)
• Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has lots of great links about copyright, fair use, and intellectual property issues.
• See also FSFF's post Documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law: free e-book and short films about the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

And finally, FSFF readers can note the basic principles of Fair Use, as set out by the Center for Social Media Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video (p. 6), as follows:

In reviewing the history of fair use litigation, we find that judges return again and again to two key questions:

• Did the unlicensed use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
• Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?

Both questions touch on, among other things, the question of whether the use will cause excessive economic harm to the copyright owner.

If the answers to these two questions are "yes," a court is likely to find a use fair. Because that is true, such a use is unlikely to be challenged in the first place.

Another consideration underlies and influences the way in which these questions are analyzed: whether the user acted reasonably and in good faith, in light of general practice in his or her particular field.

P.S. FSFF urges you also to take in the following, probably highly prescient, words by Luke McKernan, commenting on a different issue, over at the great new Screen Research blog (FSFF will write more about this site very soon): 'I think the story of 2009 is going to be the undermining of YouTube, as services based heavily or exclusively on commercial content - Hulu.com and now CBS's TV.com - come galloping up the rails, while YouTube staggers along, burdened by too much user-generated content'.....

Round up: Online Scholarship, Virtual Training Suites, and Fascinating Miscellany

Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934)

Honourable mentions in despatches (from Film Studies For Free's return to [indefatigable] active duty) for the following:

• Thanks to Mystery Man on Film and Kelly Sonora at the Online College Blog, FSFF heard of Jessica Merritt's article Reel Education: 50 Free Open Courses for Movie Lovers which lists 50 new freely accessible, online, practice and theory courses about films. There are some wonderful resources here. Below are links to some of the courses, but please do explore the full list:
  

  Special Topics in Cinematic Storytelling: [MIT]
  The Film Experience: [MIT]
  Studies in Film: [MIT]
  Topics in the Avant-Garde in Literature and Cinema: [MIT]
  A Conversation with Filmmaker Mira Nair: [Harvard]

• The vast majority of the above listed courses are provided by MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. What a great initiative, FSFF thinks.

• Lots of updates have appeared in the last weeks to Film Studies For Free's list of Online and Open-Access Film and Moving-Image Studies Writing Of Note by Individual Named Authors, so do please (re)visit the list and bookmark it, if you haven't already done so. Two of the most wondrous links to be added to it from the point of view of offering up academic models for Open Access publishing are those to the websites of Dr Geoffrey Kantaris and Professor Paul Julian Smith, both based in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. Muchísimas gracias for their generosity of spirit, as well as for their excellent work on Spanish-language film.


• Another great model worthy of interest and emulation is Spectacular Attractions, the blog by Dr Dan North, Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture in the School of English, University of Exeter. Dan has posted a great conference paper there on Cloverfield’s Obstructed Spectacle. It's a wonderfully illustrated piece of writing and has prompted some detailed responses from readers which are very much worth following, too. In response to one glowing comment, Dan deals with some of the concerns that academics have with self-publishing their work thus:
  

  I did think about keeping the paper away from the blog, in case I wanted to revise it for publication, but I think it would be very heavily updated for a journal article, so it might constitute a whole new piece. And the comments I get here, as well as at the conference, would help me to make those updates [...] Academics shouldn’t just talk to other academics.

  Please think about self-publishing your papers, people. And RESPECT to Dr North.


• Thanks to GreenCine Daily for news of the latest online issues of film journals Criticine and Cineaste.


• Ed Howard at the wonderful website Only The Cinema has announced a new blog-a-thon, which will run from January 12-23, 2009 and will focus on the early films of Howard Hawks. Quite coincidentally FSFF came across a great blogpost on early Hawks -- In defense of The Front Page (1931) -- at the marvellous early cinema blog The Crowd Roars.



• Intute is a UK-based free online service providing access to the best Web resources for education and research, selected and evaluated by a network of subject specialists.The Intute Virtual Training Suite provides free Internet tutorials to help you learn how to get the best from the Web for your education and research. The tutorials are written and updated by a national team of subject specialists based in universities and colleges across the UK. HERE's a direct link to the Media and Communication tutorial.


• Like Intute, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is funded by the UK HE and FE funding bodies to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research. JISC has just posted the following video of note: New animation: Intellectual Property Rights in the Web 2.0 world. Download it in QuickTime HERE

Documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law: free e-book and short films

The above great little comic book can currently be downloaded for free in a new and expanded edition from the Duke University Press website.

Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins takes a humorous look at copyright and fair use issues in relation to filmmaking. The book has a new foreword by Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (Director of An Inconvenient Truth) and a new introduction by award-winning novelist and copyright activist Cory Doctorow.

Here's the blurb about the book (which was available, in its earlier, shorter edition, through Google Books) from the Duke University Press website:

A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the Rocky theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? Eyes on the Prize, the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the inspiration for this comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Why do we have copyrights? What’s “fair use”? Bound by Law? reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property, and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture.

The book is the fruit of the pioneering Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Do check out their fabulous website which, among many other resources (webcasts and online articles about fair use), has the following downloadable short films (via RealPlayer):

• To Clear or not to Clear Filmmaker Chris Hegedus discusses how rights clearance practices have changed since the making of “Don’t Look Back”
• Disappearing History? Filmmaker Orlando Bagwell talks about making “Citizen King” and why “Eyes on the Prize” is no longer in circulation
• Great Composers Steal Composer Anthony Kelley visits classical and jazz traditions and explains why you can find a doppelganger for almost any tune.

If you are a budding documentary filmmaker, or if you are teaching the next generation of budding documentarians, Film Studies For Free thinks that you should definitely check out all of the above resources.