When film and law collide

Wednesday 24th March

This afternoon I spent time furthering my copyright knowledge and also refining my searches on 1920s fashion.

Fiona and I spent roughly another hour on copyright. Whilst it’s extremely complicated I find it intriguing that until 1969, there wasn’t even a classification for film. It was as if film was not even considered an artistic practice by Australian law. Before this time films were defined as dramatic works or a series of photographs. Defining the film makes a huge difference to who owns copyright. If the film is classified as a series of photographs, then the rights are held with the cinematographer and the rights don’t exist seventy years following his/her death. However, if the film is considered a dramatic piece i.e. anything that has a narrative (editing, inter-titles…anything really!) then copyright could be held by a number of people such as the director or screenwriter. This means not only must you discover who actually owns copyright, there’s always the chance that one copyright holder has not been dead for more than seventy years, in which case copyright still exists. As there is little precedent in copyright law, most of the lawsuits are settled outside court. This makes many claims even more uncertain as there is very little past information that helps define the copyright issues of today.

The rest of the day was spent conducting further searches on post WWI fashion. I had a sample of my search terms posted to the link “searching terms.” >> This should limit the amount of circle work I do in terms of titles. I find that the same prominent titles of the time continue to crop up but every now and then I’ll find something new.

I’ve found some titles that I’m excited to view. Please find the link to the right entitled “1920’s films – list one” to find out more! >>

There’s little I can do now but wait for the films to come in and see if they are what I consider worthy of the collection. At this stage its really difficult for me to know what to expect. I would like the films to have an educational value as well as an entertaining one. I’m hoping to films will somehow gauge what life was like back then through the eyes of fashion. The Eve’s Film Review pieces do this to an extent. One shot in particular shows two models chatting in what looks be a living room with their fashionable outfits on. This could be seen to comment on the way women socialized back then – face to face in a relaxed environment, seemingly private environment. Now, fashion may be transformed to a crowded cafe with women and their Blackberries. Establishing the varying factors surrounding the time frame – i.e. this period followed WWI – will help me define it’s relevance. If it makes some sort of social commentary I feel as though I’ll be on the right track.