RiP!: A Remix Manifesto

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RiP!: A Remix Manifesto
Rip a remix manifesto-poster.jpg
Directed by Brett Gaylor
Written byBrett Gaylor
Produced byMila Aung-Thwin, Kat Baulu, Germaine Ying Gee Wong
Starring Girl Talk
Lawrence Lessig
Cory Doctorow
Gilberto Gil
Cinematography Mark Ellam
Edited byBrett Gaylor
Tony Asimakopoulos
Music by Olivier Alary
Production
companies
Distributed by Documentary
Canal D
B-Side Entertainment
Release date
  • November 2008 (2008-11)
Running time
86 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

RiP!: A Remix Manifesto is a 2008 open-source documentary film about "the changing concept of copyright" [1] [2] directed by Brett Gaylor. [3]

Contents

Created over a period of six years, the documentary film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to the Open Source Cinema website, helping to create the "world's first open source documentary" as Gaylor put it. The project's working title was Basement Tapes, [4] (referring to the album of the same name) but it was renamed RiP!: A Remix Manifesto prior to theatrical release. Gaylor encourages more people to create their own remixes from this movie, [5] using media available from the Open Source Cinema website, or other websites like YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, or MySpace.

Background

Gaylor traveled the world to find like-minded people who would help him draft the "Remixer's Manifesto" that makes up the structure of his open source documentary. The manifesto reads as follows:

  1. Culture always builds on the past.
  2. The past always tries to control the future.
  3. Our future is becoming less free.
  4. To build free societies you must limit the control of the past
    Brett Gaylor in Rip! A Remix Manifesto [6]

To further his point, Gaylor separates the corporations from the public domain, defining the former using so-called "CopyRIGHT," and the latter, which represents the free exchange of ideas, as "CopyLEFT." [7] Gaylor and Gillis are clearly on the side of the Copyleft, promoting the free flow and growth of creativity and ideas. To enable a free remixing culture also with his film, he released RiP! under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 [8] Creative Commons license.

Participants

The documentary is particularly interested in the legal grey area of remixing existing works. The film features appearances by:

Festivals and awards

RiP!: A Remix Manifesto made its international debut at the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) in November 2008. [11] It won the festival's Audience Award.

The film made its US debut at the South by Southwest festival on 15 March 2009. [12]

The Canadian news-magazine Maclean's called the movie as "a dazzling frontal assault on how corporate culture is using copyright law to muzzle freedom of expression." [13]

Showing at the Whistler Film Festival, that took place 4 to 7 December 2008, [14] it won the Cadillac People's Choice Award. [15] It also received the Audience Choice award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.[ citation needed ]

At the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal it won the Special Jury Prize. It was the closing film at Docs Barcelona. It was an honorable mention at the EBS film festival (Korea). It was the opening film of the Ambulante Film Festival (Mexico City). It was a Selection at the South by Southwest Film Festival, at Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, the Adelaide Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Silverdocs, Nashville Film Festival, Victoria International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Festival, Planete Doc (Poland), Available Light Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and the Munich Dokfest, the New Zealand International Film Festivals, Guth Gaga Film Festival (Ireland), and the International Film Festival of Rio.[ citation needed ]

The film was in the running for Best Feature Length Documentary in the 30th Annual Genie Awards in Canada. [16]

Broadcast

Documentary (Canada), Documentary Channel (USA), NHK (Japan), SBS (Australia), YLE (Finland), NRK (Norway), EBS (Korea), Canal D – Quebec, Yes – Israel, VPRO – Netherlands, TV3 – Catalonia, TVP Cultura – Poland, Globo – Brazil, Cult – Italy, Planete - France, iSat – Argentina + South America

Reception

Many of the reviewers on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes struggled with the director's point of film and the film received a 42% approval rating from critics there, based on 12 reviews. [17] Audiences were more mixed, giving the film a 75% approval rating from 250 reviews.

RiP!: A Remix Manifesto 2.0

On 27 February 2009 Brett Gaylor started a new project on his site, Open Source Cinema, dubbed RiP!: A Remix Manifesto 2.0. With this project, he invited users to take the original documentary, remix it, and upload their contributions to be included in a new, improved version of the film. 2.0 was screened at the SilverDocs film festival.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of copyright</span> Dissenting views of copyright law

Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implementations, the benefits of which they claim do not justify the policy's costs to society. They advocate for changing the current system, though different groups have different ideas of what that change should be. Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying. Others seek the abolition of copyright itself.

A remix is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The only characteristic of a remix is that it appropriates and changes other materials to create something new.

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Open Source Cinema was a collaborative website created to produce the documentary film RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, a co-production with Montreal's EyeSteelFilm and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). It was launched in 2004 as a public beta, and in 2007 launched at the South By Southwest Interactive festival on the Drupal platform.

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References

  1. Kirsner, Scott. "CinemaTech Filmmaker Q&A: Brett Gaylor of Open Source Cinema".
  2. Sinnott, Shane. "The Load-Down Archived 30 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine ", Montreal Mirror , 2007-03-29. Accessed 2008-06-30
  3. brett-gaylor-talks-rip-remix-manifesto on wired.com (2009)
  4. CinemaTech interview with Brett Gaylor about Open Source Cinema project at Google Videos Archived 5 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Copyright or Copywrong?: 'RiP' Challenges Intellectual Property Rights By Marc Glassman on documentary.org (archived)
  6. Hardy, Steve (8 March 2009). "Rip! A Remix Manifesto". Creative Generalist. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  7. Gelevan, Douglas (2 April 2010). "Getting 'RiP'ped – Brett Gaylor's RiP: A Remix Manifesto". Douglas Gelevan Reports. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  8. IP:_A_Remix_Manifesto on creativecommons.org
  9. "RiP: A Remix Manifesto: review". Canada.com. 16 October 2008. Archived from the original on 26 September 2014. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  10. Rohter, Larry (12 March 2007). "Gilberto Gil and the politics of music". International Herald Tribune . Salvador, Brazil: The New York Times Company . Retrieved 16 March 2008.
  11. "winners at the IDFA festival 2008". Archived from the original 2008-12-07.
  12. "SXSW Interactive at the Movies". Archived from the original on 20 January 2011.
  13. Johnson, Brian D. (8 December 2008). "Mashing-up copyright in 'RiP: A Remix Manifesto.'". Maclean's. Retrieved 19 June 2014.
  14. "iofilm review of RiP!: A Remix Manifesto". Archived from the original on 1 June 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2014.
  15. Fred Lee, "Whistler fest shines on Canadian films; Justice gala supports first responders". National Post , 13 December 2008.
  16. Do, Anh Khoi (12 April 2010). "Winners at the 30th Genie Awards". The Cultural Post. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  17. RiP: A Remix Manifesto at Rotten Tomatoes