VFF: Remix in Pieces

Brett Gaylor’s RiP: A Remix Manifesto challenges the curerent state of the arts

Every year, Monday picks at least one film to sponsor at the Victoria Film Festival. From the moment we got a list of films back in December, our first choice was RiP: A Remix Manifesto. This was based solely on reading a few lines about the film we hadn’t even seen yet. But we’d written about one of RiP’s subjects, Girl Talk, recently and ideas about intellectual property are right up Monday’s alley. Enter CanWest Global donating a chunk of change to VFF and all of a sudden, CanWest is given sponsorship of the entire documentary program at VFF and we can’t touch it.

“Sorry to hear that,” says RiP director Brett Gaylor. “I know how that feels.” Gaylor says he has to play the corporate game as well to get his film seen. He mentions he’s got plenty of anecdotes about his own team of lawyers getting music cleared to use in a film that is raising the middle fingers to the very companies that own the copyright of the music. Gaylor says he’s the kind of person who believes that while he might disagree with some big-business practices, it’s better in the long run that audiences actually have the chance to see his film. “Getting messages in there is really important,” Gaylor says. “On the other hand, I recognize that the momentum for this film is going to be through the Monday Magazines, the weeklies and the blogs, and I feel its at a tipping point where it’s actually more relevant than the big media.”

Gaylor says he’s always liked the idea of making media that is more personal, more accessible—and with his Open Source Cinema website, he does just that. In RiP, Gaylor initially focuses on remix artist Girl Talk, but then the film blossoms out to encompass so much more than music, copyright and intellectual property—the latter of which is increasingly being gobbled up by a small number ginormous corporations.

“At the end of the day, how many tears can we cry for [the music industry]?” Gaylor wonders. “We’re in the middle of a shift, but this whole idea of who has access to culture, who has the right to make culture, how long should copyright last, that’s a bigger question that’s been going on for a long time, but now sort of becoming a public conscious issue. It extends beyond just musical works or video works, it has a lot to do with other aspects of our culture like science, agriculture, food, medicine.”

For example, Gaylor questions how we as a global society are going to ensure that developing economies have the same access to medicines the more privileged do? “How are we going to make sure that one corporation isn’t in control of all the apple seeds for the rest of eternity?” Gaylor asks. “Those are all questions of intellectual properties decisions that are happening right now. One of the eye-opening things for me was how much the North American economy was designed to be based on intellectual property and how crazy a concept that was and how much of a huge massive failure that’s been at the highest levels.”

With the tanking North American economy, Gaylor is happy to see other countries saying FU to the USA. RiP showcases recent developments in Brazil where governments have gone against intellectual property laws to create affordable medicine for AIDS sufferers. “I wouldn’t say that we want a global economy where nobody is respecting anyone else’s intellectual property,” Galyor says. “I think that since it happens anyway, we might as well envision a system where the developing countries have some leniency.”

Could a system like this ever work, especially considering the place in history we’ve arrvied at? “That’s the thing about the future,” Gaylor says. “Nobody’s been there, so nobody can tell you exactly what to do. People always ask me that at the end of the film, ‘What’s going to happen with the music industry?’ I don’t know—but I do know with a certain amount of trust we can get there and, looking at these different models, we can all improve our livelihoods rather than just investing that into a certain small few hands . . . which is what the intellectual property system is doing right now. It’s concentrating power.”

And nothing transforms power faster than a good manifesto.

RiP screens at 7 p.m. Monday, February 2 at the Odeon.