Gregg Gillis wants to “put Elton John in a headlock, put a beat behind him and pour a beer on his head.” At least, that’s how he describes his approach to making music. One of the protagonists in the fight to reform copyright law, Gillis, better known as mashup artist Girl Talk, is also the protagonist of the new documentary RiP!: A Remix Manifesto. Directed by Montreal-based filmmaker Brett Gaylor, the documentary is a look at the battle between copyright and “copyleft,” or the dispute between those who are trying to prevent artists like Girl Talk from using copyrighted material in their music and those who are in support of it.
The manifesto consists of four main points that are explored over the course of the film. First, culture always builds on the past. Second, the past always tries to control the future. Third, our future is becoming less free. And fourth, to build free societies you must limit the control of the past. Through news, music and video clips and interviews with a range of individuals including Gillis, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, critic Cory Doctorow and Brazil’s minister of culture Gilberto Gil, the film explains and critiques what has become an international battle over culture and ownership.
The film makes the case that culture across the ages, from Walt Disney’s fairy tales to the art of Andy Warhol, has involved a sort of “remixing.” While computers and the Internet have radically affected the creation and distribution of culture in the present day, the idea behind the remix is the same. And although artists continue to incorporate material from various sources into their work, copyright laws now make it hugely expensive for them to do so. Just six corporations own over 90 per cent of media holdings in the United States, and they aren’t about to give anything away for free.
Where Gaylor does a good job of acknowledging that a lot of money is at stake for those in the pro-copyright camp, he neglects to address the other motivation behind copyright law — artists’ rights. Still, calling his film “the world’s first open-source documentary,” Gaylor practices what he preaches and offers raw footage of the film on his website, opensourcecinema.org, for audiences to “remix.” Whether it’s on the big screen or your laptop, this is recommended viewing for mashup enthusiasts, culture jammers and law-abiding citizens alike.
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)