Documentary examines art in an interactive world

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center presents the documentary Copyright Criminals at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 20, and 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 21.

The film is part of Community Cinema, a monthly national free screening series showcasing nine documentaries that feature compelling social issues and often-controversial topics from the Emmy Awardwinning PBS series Independent Lens.

Computers, mobile phones and other interactive technologies are changing our relationship with media, blurring the line between producer and consumer, and radically changing what it means to be creative. As artists find ever-more inventive ways to insert old influences into new material, the documentary asks a critical question: Can anyone really own a sound?

As Copyright Criminals reveals, music-making “came out of the professional recording studios,” says Coldcut’s Matt Black, “and into the bedrooms. That changed the music industry, and the reverberations are still being felt today.”

The Community Cinema series is designed to engage communities through film produced by the Independent Television Service (ITVS). The films are followed by lively panel discussions that bring together citizens, organizations and public television stations to encourage dialogue and action around important and timely social issues.

This month’s discussions will be led by Sheboygan’s own hip-hop and R&B artist J RillA. He writes, produces, records, performs, mixes and masters all his music himself in his home recording studio. RillA’s hit single “No Longer Mine” will be on the soundtrack of an upcoming Los Angeles based motion picture titled “8 Year Theory.” RillA is known for his positive attitude and impressive music content that excludes and does not promote drugs, violence, disrespect, degradation or vulgar swearing.

Copyright Criminals, a documentary by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod, examines the creative and commercial value of musical sampling, including the ongoing debates about artistic expression, copyright law and (of course) money.

For more than 30 years, as hip-hop evolved from the urban streets of New York to its current status as a multi-billion-dollar industry, hip-hop performers and producers have been reusing portions of previously recorded music in new, otherwise original compositions. But when lawyers and record companies got involved, what was once referred to as a “borrowed melody” became a “copyright infringement.”

Through interviews with many of hip-hop music’s founding figures – like Public Enemy, De La Soul and Digital Underground –along with emerging artists such as audiovisual remixers Eclectic Method, Copyright Criminals illuminates both sides of the debate, from traditional musicians who view sampling as pillaging to those who argue that the practice of borrowing is by no means new nor is it unique to hip-hop or even music: Think of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans. “Sampling itself is an embodiment of this active process of engaging with history,” argues hip-hop insider Jeff Chang.

Copyright Criminals also provides an in-depth look at artists who have been sampled, such as funk legend George Clinton and renowned drummer Clyde Stubblefield, the world’s most sampled musician, best known for his work with James Brown.

About the Filmmaker

Kembrew McLeod (executive producer, researcher and writer) is an independent documentary filmmaker and an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa. His books and films focus on both popular music and the cultural impact of intellectual property law. His book Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property received a book award from the American Library Association in 2006. His co-authored book with Peter DiCola, Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, and co-edited book with Rudolf Kuenzli, Cutting Across Media: Interventionist Collage, Appropriation Art and Copyright Law, will both be published by Duke University Press in mid-2010. McLeod’s documentary Money for Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music was screened at the 2002 South by Southwest Film Festival and the 2002 New England Film and Video Festival, where it received the Rosa Luxemburg Award for Social Consciousness. McLeod’s second documentary, Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property, is a companion to his book of the same name. He is also an occasional music journalist whose pieces have appeared in Rolling Stone, Mojo, Spin, Village Voice and the New Rolling Stone Album Guide.

About Community Cinema

Community Cinema is the largest public-interest outreach program in public or commercial television. Since its inception in September 2005, more than 100,000 people have attended over 1,000 Community Cinema events across the country. These events have been produced in partnership with more than 2,500 community-based organizations, including American Legion Auxiliary, Disabled American Veterans, CARE USA, Amnesty International, The Green Belt Movement, and The Nature Conservancy. This year the program breaks new ground by launching an integrated social media system to unite community discussions into a national conversation through Facebook, Twitter and the new Community Cinema blog.

For a complete lineup of the ITVS Community Cinema series at the Arts Center visit www.jmkac.org/CommunityCinema09/10.