Prometheus 6

Quote of note:

Berkeley's Else estimated it will cost nearly $500,000 to clear rights. Forman hopes to get the series back on television by 2006.

In the meantime, fans of Eyes on the Prize can likely find old copies of the series at their local library, and VHS sets are available used on Amazon.com for the eye-popping price of $700 to $1,500.

and

Eyes on the Prize is only one example of documentaries that are in limbo. The Center for Social Media recently detailed the licensing problem in its November study, "Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers." The study interviewed 45 professional documentary filmmakers and found that rights-clearance costs have risen "dramatically" in the past 20 years, and the process for clearing rights is "arduous and frustrating, especially around movies and music."

Bleary Days for Eyes on the Prize 

By Katie Dean

02:00 AM Dec. 22, 2004 PT

Eyes on the Prize, the landmark documentary on the civil rights movement, is no longer broadcast or sold new in the United States. It's illegal.

The 14-part series highlights key events in black Americans' struggle for equality and is considered an essential resource by educators and historians, but the filmmakers no longer have clearance rights to much of the archival footage used in the documentary. It cannot be rebroadcast on PBS (where it originally aired) or any other channels, and cannot be released on DVD until the rights are cleared again and paid for.

Securing clearance rights to archival footage is a growing problem for independent filmmakers -- and documentary filmmakers in particular. Filmmakers must pay for the rights to use every song, photograph or video clip included in the film. Since many documentary films are made with small budgets, filmmakers often can only afford to buy rights for a limited amount of time. That leaves many filmmakers essentially renting footage, and rendering their work unusable after a certain number of years unless they can find more funding to clear the rights again.

Eyes on the Prize is only one example of documentaries that are in limbo. The Center for Social Media recently detailed the licensing problem in its November study, "Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers." The study interviewed 45 professional documentary filmmakers and found that rights-clearance costs have risen "dramatically" in the past 20 years, and the process for clearing rights is "arduous and frustrating, especially around movies and music."

"Anyone who intends to make products for mass media is really hostage to the terms of copyright," said Pat Aufderheide, one of the authors of the study and a professor at American University.

Documentary filmmaker Henry Hampton's Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years/Bridge to Freedom 1965 debuted on PBS in 1987. The six-part series covered 1954 to 1965 and included such events as the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that "separate but equal" was unconstitutional and the 1963 march on Washington, D.C. Eight additional programs make up Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads, which aired in 1990 and covered the civil rights movement to the mid-1980s. The programs won a slew of awards, including several Emmys and an Oscar nomination.

"It is the principal film account of the most important American social justice movement of the 20th century," said Clayborne Carson, a Stanford University history professor and editor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers.

Hampton and his colleagues combined footage from numerous sources to tell the story of the civil rights movement. They used their own individual interviews with leaders like Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy, as well as interviews with average citizens who participated. They added newsreel footage, clips from local television stations, still photographs and music. That involved clearing rights from all different sources, with various time limits on how long the footage could be used.

Filmmakers have to consider a number of variables when clearing rights, said Kenn Rabin, a documentary filmmaker and archivist for Eyes on the Prize. They have to determine what markets to clear their film for -- for distribution in theaters, film festivals, home video, classroom use or some combination. They must decide if they want the film distributed just in the United States or overseas. And then they choose how long they want to secure rights to the footage -- for 10 years, for instance, or "rights in perpetuity."

"Everyone wants worldwide rights in perpetuity," Rabin said. "Then you have to come back to earth and say, 'Oh, what do you really want to do?'.... (Filmmakers) start making compromises."

Hollywood studios don't have the same problems because in general their budgets can afford whatever the cost to clear all rights for all markets, he said.

The licensing problem is "the hottest, most important issue going on in our (media) world right now," said Matthew White, vice president of the film library for National Geographic Television & Film, which manages more than 1 million hours of footage.

"You need to be able to provide this material to the creative (community)," White said. "But there has to be a way, ultimately, to pay those people who are doing all the work to keep those archives afloat."

The hurdles that filmmakers face will only get more complex as video expands over broadband and cell phones, and as more people work with digital video and editing tools, White said. The creative community and rights holders must find a way to make the rights process easier. Otherwise, people will resort to civil disobedience when making and using media.

Eyes on the Prize cleared rights to broadcast on PBS, for educational distribution and for broadcast overseas on stations like the BBC, according to Cindy Kuhn, post-production supervisor for the first Eyes series.

Rights for the series began to expire in the mid-1990s. Renewing them is complicated because Henry Hampton died in 1998, and his production company, Blackside, is now owned by his two sisters, who are not filmmakers.

A lawyer for Blackside, Sandy Forman, is directing an effort to re-license the lapsed footage. Forman -- along with Kuhn and several other Eyes veterans -- has received a $65,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to research the cost of re-licensing the footage.

"It's a very important project to bring back and keep in front of the public," Forman said.

Once the group determines how much it will cost to obtain the rights and any post-production costs associated with the series rebroadcast, it hopes to clear the rights to broadcast the series on television and to distribute it in schools and libraries again. The group will have to find additional funding to license the footage.

Berkeley's Else estimated it will cost nearly $500,000 to clear rights. Forman hopes to get the series back on television by 2006.

In the meantime, fans of Eyes on the Prize can likely find old copies of the series at their local library, and VHS sets are available used on Amazon.com for the eye-popping price of $700 to $1,500.

Filmmakers say Eyes on the Prize documented a critical period of American history, and that the award-winning series should be preserved for the next generation.

"It was such a period of expansion of American democracy.... It's especially important for young people to see examples of democracy at work," Kuhn said. "It's the only way that they will learn to participate in a democracy and learn what's required to maintain it."