Not so fast…

Another example of the absurdity of the difficulty in obtaining rights and clearances for documentaries. Eyes on the Prize, the great groundbreaking 1987 documentary on the Civil Rights movement, is being re-broadcast on PBS this week. But it wasn’t an easy road, bc the rights to many of the images had expired. A 2005 Washington Post story took a look at the uphill struggle faced by producers:

"The film is hampered by the same problem many documentary filmmakers are encountering as they wrestle with buying and renewing licenses to use copyrighted archival footage, photos and music. Independent filmmakers must pay for each piece of copyrighted material, and those costs have escalated in the past 10 years.

... 'Eyes on the Prize' is one of the most effective documentaries ever put together that dealt with civic engagement," says civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot, who led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and today is a program manager for the D.C. Department of Human Services. "This is analogous to stopping the circulation of all the books about Martin Luther King, stopping the circulation of all the books about Malcolm X, stopping the circulation of books about the founding of America. " via kottke.org