Everyone should check
http://downhillbattle.org/eyes/ to see if a screening of the documentary "Eyes on the Prize" is playing near you. I'll be seeing it tomorrow evening in the ATL, there are dozens of screenings planned, organized by downhillbattle.org, the same guys who organized the "Grey Tuesday" download of Dangermouse's "Grey Album" last year.
Here's a little info on the documentary:
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Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning documentary series that many consider a foundation of our collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement. It's the most vidid portrayal of the civil rights movement and for millions of people, it's the foundation for understanding what happened. Makers of Eyes on the Prize brought together extensive historical footage from the period and featured ordinary people who helped change the course of history for the better. No other book or movie has comprehensively brought together this much footage or has become a more common reference on the civil rights movement.
So why has Eyes on the Prize been unavailable for the past 10 years? Copyright restrictions. For example, the film includes footage of a group of people singing "Happy Birthday" to Martin Luther King. Incredibly, "Happy Birthday" is under copyright and some rights holders believe that they should be given licensing fees if the song appears in any film, even a documentary. (Yes that's correct, "Happy Birthday" is restricted under copyright--so if you've ever sung it in a restaurant or a park, you could literally be breaking the law.)
But "Happy Birthday" is just the beginning. Eyes on the Prize is made up of news footage, photographs, songs and lyrics from the Civil Rights Movement that are tangled up in a web of licensing restrictions. Many of these licenses had expired by 1995 and the film's production company, Blackside, could not afford the exorbitant costs of renewing them. "Eyes on the Prize" has been unavailable to the public ever since.
Copyright law has expanded out of control, and its public mission is no longer being served. Copyright was originally designed to encourage creativity and innovation--much like patent law. But for the past 50 years multi-national corporations like Disney and the major record labels have aggressively lobbied Congress to expand and expand and expand the reach of copyright law. Instead of lasting 20 years and requiring registration (like patents do) copyright has become automatic and now corporate copyrights last 90 years.
In addition to the excessive 90 year copyright, corporations have created a legal environment that effectively strips the free speech rights of documentary filmmakers and artists to excerpt copyrighted works for their productions. Nowadays even incidental copyrighted material appearing in a documentary (e.g. a television that's visible while people are talking) is being tossed on the cutting room floor because filmmakers are threatened with lawsuits. Copyright has become so twisted that it now severely restricts innovation, creativity and speech rather than encouraging it. In this case, our unworkable copyright law has kept "Eyes on the Prize" out of homes and classrooms, depriving us of a crucial historical record.
Last week Lawrence Guyot, a prominent civil rights leader with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, told the Washington Post, "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."
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It's incredible footage if you've never seen it before. If there's a showing near you, plese try and attend regardless of your heritage(I'm the whitest man alive, pigment wise, and I still think this is the most important documentary I've ever seen).
