A Fair(y) Use Tale (Eric Faden, 2007)

This year’s “Top Film Discoveries” list is still four months away but certain themes are already revealing themselves. In many ways, 2019 is MMC!‘s year of collage and found footage as it includes wonderful city symphonies like Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927) and Études sur Paris (André Sauvage, 1928), Luigi Cozzi’s 1977 psychedelic remix of Godzilla (aka Cozzilla), and the activist work of Craig Baldwin. Our next two Criterion Collection proposals will celebrate the art of appropriation and so we set that table with this informative review of copyright principles prepared by Bucknell University Professor Eric Faden. Be careful not to take the existence of A Fair(y) Use Tale (2007) as a statement on its legality as Disney never challenged Bucknell’s use of its content. Take this instead as evidence that the only thing that trumps the Mouse House’s enforcement of copyright is its care not to establish a disadvantageous legal precedent.