This is such a shame. I hope it can get resolved soon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Jan16.html
A Struggle for Rights
'Eyes on the Prize' Mired in Money Battle
By DeNeen L. Brown and Hamil R. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 17, 2005; Page C01
Rep. John Lewis remembers the heads cracking, the horses trampling, the faces of state troopers.
They told the civil rights marchers they had three minutes to clear the bridge. A minute and a half later, they began beating the marchers with bullwhips and nightsticks that day in 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
The Georgia congressman remembers the freedom rides, the sit-ins, the coffee poured on his head as he looked straight ahead, not fighting back. Remembers the firebombing of the houses of those who tried to register to vote. The lynchings, strange fruit, people hanging from trees. The for-colored-only signs, the cigarettes put out on his head, the spit dribbling down his face as white boys told the "colored" protesters to get out.
Remembers his parents telling him that was just the way it was. "Don't get in the way." Remembers getting hit in the head with police sticks, and seeing death.
Many of these images of the black freedom struggle were captured in the award-winning 1987 documentary series "Eyes on the Prize," which portrayed the civil rights movement and the heroic efforts of Martin Luther King Jr.
What scares Lewis now is that a new generation of people who know little or nothing about what it took for black people to get this far in this country -- with rights to vote, rights to attend the same schools as whites, rights to live in the same neighborhoods, ride the same trains, buses, work in the same places -- may not be able to see the film.
Yes, there are books and photographs about the struggle. But those alone can't tell the story the way "Eyes on the Prize" did, Lewis says. The series is no longer available in stores and can't be shown on television or released on DVD until the filmmakers are able to renew the expired rights to footage, photos and music that were used. Old sets of VHS tapes owned by community centers and schools are wearing out. Teachers and librarians seeking new copies can't purchase them, except for rare ones being sold on eBay for as much as $1,500.
The film is hampered by the same problem many documentary filmmakers are encountering as they wrestle with buying and renewing licenses to use copyrighted archival footage, photos and music. Independent filmmakers must pay for each piece of copyrighted material, and those costs have escalated in the past 10 years.
Some of the footage in "Eyes" was cleared for only five years, and the executive producer died before renewing the rights. "Eyes on the Prize," which was produced by Blackside Inc., a film and television company founded by Henry Hampton, won 23 awards, including two Emmys, for outstanding documentary and for outstanding achievement in writing. The first six parts aired in 1987. It was last broadcast on PBS in 1994. Many of the rights in the eight-part sequel, "Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1965-1985)," expired five years after it aired in 1990.
" 'Eyes on the Prize' is one of the most effective documentaries ever put together that dealt with civic engagement," says civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot, who led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and today is a program manager for the D.C. Department of Human Services. "This is analogous to stopping the circulation of all the books about Martin Luther King, stopping the circulation of all the books about Malcolm X, stopping the circulation of books about the founding of America.
"I would call upon everyone who has access to 'Eyes on the Prize' to openly violate any and all laws regarding its showing."
In November, the Center for Social Media at American University released a report highlighting the problems that documentary filmmakers have as they try to clear rights to images. The report, which recommends finding ways to lower costs for obtaining rights, says current interpretations of copyright law "leads to a creative stranglehold."
"Filmmakers must pay a license to use a pop song that may play in the background [of footage shot] in a pizza parlor, an image or sequence from a movie, or from archival footage owned by someone else," the report says. "They may need to pay not only songwriters but performers, not only movie studios but actors. There is no central place to find out who owns what. There is no rule of thumb for pricing. No one has to agree to license. And it doesn't matter if you didn't intend to quote it. Did somebody sing 'Happy Birthday' in your documentary? Too bad -- you owe Time Warner a small fortune.
"A system that has a logic -- it's fair to pay others to use their work -- is spinning out of control."
The report maintains that the difficulties have grown "as media consolidation has also consolidated control over film and photo archives." Conglomerates have collected archival footage and songs in "mega-shops," which are sometimes less willing to negotiate prices with filmmakers who contend they are creating for a good cause.
On the other side of the issue are those who say it's important that artists, singers and creators be paid for the use of their work. "The real telling point is, it has become unfortunate in our culture that we are not putting enough funding into documentary films in the first place," says Bert Sugayan, vice president to rights services for Getty Images, which manages millions of photos and illustrations, and thousands of hours of historical footage.
After all, he says, "there are creators, artists who have copyrights to creative expression, be it a film clip or a song, who expect to be compensated for their creative expression just like the documentary filmmaker who needs to be paid."
Patricia Aufderheide, a professor of communications at American University and director of the Center for Social Media, agrees that artists should be paid, but "there are some circumstances where the value to society [of] taking something without paying the person is high enough to make it worthwhile. Some of that is satire, parody, cultural criticism. Other cases have historical value, for example, the footage of JFK being shot."
Aufderheide -- who co-authored the report with Peter Jaszi, a professor of law at American University -- says some important documentaries are being held "hostage." " 'Eyes on the Prize' is a really good example of how confusing and expensive the world of copyright clearance affects our cultural legacy," she says. "Renewing the rights will be very expensive, very time-consuming, and will cost more than half a million dollars."
Nina Gilden Seavey, director of the documentary center at George Washington University, says: "Usually, it's not a problem -- nobody notices if a film disappears because it is out of license. But 'Eyes on the Prize' was so seminal, it is more obvious."
Jon Else, a co-producer and cinematographer for "Eyes on the Prize," says: "In essence every documentary that contains any archival footage or music, there is a time bomb. With 'Eyes on the Prize' and other films I worked on, they are extremely hard to raise money for. When they get made, they are underfunded. . . . Because we are generally short of funds, we buy a minimum period of license, usually for five years."
Hampton, the executive producer of "Eyes on the Prize," died of lung cancer in 1998, and Blackside eventually stopped making films. In a 1993 interview, Hampton said he sought to show a different side of the civil rights movement: "A hundred civil rights stories had been told, but it was always black people being saved by whites. In 'Eyes,' we brought our people up in history."
But even as Hampton tried to capture the movement, he met resistance from those who were part of it.
They, too, want to be paid. In 1992 Hampton received a letter from King's estate accusing Hampton of using images of King without permission. News reports said Hampton offered $100,000 and was turned down because the estate wanted more money and control over the material. Blackside sued, saying the demands hampered Blackside's right to free speech. They eventually settled out of court.
But the problem of rights to images continued to be an issue with the documentary.
"It was after Henry's untimely death that the rights expired for 'Eyes on the Prize,' " says Dante James, an independent filmmaker who produced films at Blackside. "And for whatever reason, the people who were in control of the company and in control of the series did not renew the rights and the rights expired. Predominantly it was costs. . . . Had Henry still been alive, I'm sure the rights would have been cleared." When Hampton died, he left Blackside to his sisters, Veva Zimmerman and Judi Hampton. Tobias Zimmerman, whose mother is a co-owner, says Blackside is no longer producing documentaries. The company, based in Boston, still owns the rights to "Eyes on the Prize."
Six months ago, the nonprofit Ford Foundation gave a $65,000 grant to Filmmakers Collaborative, an organization of documentary filmmakers, to research how much it would cost to renew footage rights for "Eyes." Sandy Forman, a lawyer for Blackside, says the group will submit a report on the costs at the end of the month.
"We are trying to acquire rights in perpetuity," says Forman. "Our ultimate goal is to keep the series in front of the public in perpetuity."