Registration open: ‘Can I really use this? Copyright exceptions for filmmakers’

On Tuesday 21^st November 2023, CREATe (University of Glasgow) and CIPPM (Bournemouth University) are co-hosting the event ‘Can I really use this? Copyright exceptions for filmmakers’. The event will take place at The Regent cinema in Christchurch, near Bournemouth – 51 High St, Christchurch, BH23 1AS – bringing together a panel of leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of filmmaking and copyright law. The event is free and can only be attended in person. Places are limited and can be booked through this bookitbee link: CREATe and CIPPM event – Bournemouth.

‘Can I really use this? Copyright exceptions for filmmakers’ was originally scheduled for 27 February 2023 as part of the CREATe@10 Policy Futures Series, but was cancelled due to strike action by University and College Union (UCU).

The event follows on from a CREATe Public Lecture titled ‘Getty Images: copyright hawk or corporate copyleftist?’ on Monday 20^th November 2023, 5.30pm – 7pm UK time (Kelvin Hall Lecture Theatre, University of Glasgow, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AW). During the lecture, filmmaker and scholar Prof. Richard Misek will present and expand on his recent film ‘A History of the World According to Getty Images’.

Original illustration by Ilaria Urbinati for The Forger’s Apprentice, episode 3 of The Game is On! series.

The event in Christchurch on 21^st November will offer a great opportunity to hear from experts how existing materials such as film and TV clips, music and images can be reused lawfully and creatively under UK copyright law, whether for educational purposes or in the creation of new films. Filmmakers, film and law students, lecturers, and anyone with an interest in filmmaking or copyright law (or both!) are encouraged to attend. The discussion will focus on copyright exceptions, provisions in the UK copyright act that enable the lawful reuse of protected works without permission from the copyright owner. It will also be an opportunity to discuss the Code of Best Practices in Creative Reuse for Documentary Filmmakers, co-developed by CREATe and IViR (University of Amsterdam) as part of the ReCreating Europe consortium; and the Code of Fair Practice in Film Education, co-created with Learning on Screen, the Bodleian Libraries and the University of Oxford, and City, University of London.

The event – co-hosted by Bartolomeo Meletti (CREATe) and Claudy Op den Kamp (CIPPM) – will kick off at 2pm with the screening of two short films produced by Bournemouth BA (Hons) Film students, who will present their work and describe their understanding of the exceptions they relied on to produce them. Following the screening, the panel of experts and practitioners will respond to the students’ presentations and will discuss the scope of application of exceptions that are relevant for filmmaking and film education. After a short break, Professor Stef van Gompel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Chris Morrison (Bodleian Libraries) will introduce a panel discussion by briefly presenting the codes of best practices for documentary filmmakers and for film educators.

Attendees are in for a treat. After a drinks and canapes reception in the foyer of the cinema, at 5pm, award-winning filmmaker Charlie Shackleton will present their masterpiece The Afterlight.

’Fragments of hundreds of films from around the world bring together an ensemble cast of actors with one thing in common: each is no longer alive. Together, they contend with a fragile existence lived solely through these traces of their work. The Afterlight exists as a single 35mm film print. Further eroding every time it screens, the film is a living document of its life in circulation. Eventually it will disappear entirely.’

Still from The Afterlight (2021), directed and assembled by Charlie Shackleton.