[ Applause ]
>> Karyn Temple: Good morning.
Welcome to our 20th copyright matters event.
I am Karen Temple, Acting Director
of the United States Copyright Office.
Today we are excited
to be celebrating the lifecycle of copyright.
What do I mean by the lifecycle of copyright?
Well generally, our friends at Webster define the lifecycle
as "the series of stages through which something,
such as an individual, culture
or manufactured product passes during its lifetime."
While copyright, of course, is not a living organism,
it too has a lifecycle and passes
through many stages over time.
Starting from the very beginning,
when it's not even a copyright yet, but simply an idea
or thought that serves as that seed for a later piece
of artwork, that then grows into a fully formed copyrighted work,
such as a book, song, photograph or painting.
Over the course of its lifecycle
that copyrighted work may spread far and wide on its own
as it adapts and generates other works.
And finally, at the end of its copyright lifecycle,
when the full copyright term of protection has been achieved,
the copyright work returns figuratively to the earth,
as it enters the public domain and is free to use
and reuse by everyone.
I still find it amazing and inspiring
that the founding fathers were able
to appreciate the extraordinary importance of copyright
and the copyright lifecycle by enshrining it article one
of our constitution insuring both strong copyright
protection, but also recognizing the value of limited terms
and the public domain.
The full value and beauty
of our copyright system can unfortunately sometimes be
forgotten and seen as some sort of barrier
to creation and innovation.
When, in fact, it is far from that.
As the Supreme Court has recognized,
copyright is the engine of free expression.
And the lifecycle of copyright including its exceptions,
limited term and the public domain is all part
of that critically important framework created
on our constitution.
So today, we have the distinct pleasure to celebrate part
of that lifecycle in a way
that we have not been able to do for some time.
On January 1 of this year, hundreds of works that had been
under copyright protection entered into the public domain.
These were works that had been created in 1923.
Many have been widely recognizable
for almost 100 years, songs such as the Charleston,
as you just heard and yes we have No Bananas.
Films just as Harold Lloyd's Safety Last.
Buster Keaton's, Our Hospitality
and Charlie Chaplan's The Pilgrim.
Books, stories and essays by the likes of PG - GK Chesterton,
Anton Chekov, Agatha Christie, Aldous Huxley,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudyard Kipling,
Sinclair Lewis and P.G. Woodhouse.
These works would have entered the public domain in 1999,
but then following the lead of the European Union
and to protect American authors from inequity overseas,
Congress extended copyright protection
in the United States by 20 years.
And so this year is the first time in two decades
that a large batch of older works has simultaneously fallen
into the public domain at one time.
It is important to recognize
that when a work enters the public domain of course,
it does not represent the death of copyright; rather it is part
of copyright's lifecycle.
The next stage of life for that creative work.
The public domain is an inherent and integral part
of the copyright system.
So, when people say that they value copyright law,
the public domain is a crucial component of that.
In fact, throughout our history artistic hits have been often
adaptations of classics that were in the public domain
or new creations called from public domain sources.
Hollywood films, Kiss Me Kate
and more recently 10 Things I Hate About You are adaptations
of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.
The 2009 novel and movie Pride and Prejudice
and Zombie's is an adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel
and Beyonce's Ave Maria is an adaptation of Schubert's.
In fact, many popular animated movies
and theater productions are modern
and commercially successful takes
on classic public domain fairy tales.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella,
Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast.
This lifecycle of copyright is crucial to the overall system.
It provides authors the inspiration and raw material
to create something new.
And that is why it is valued by both authors and users,
because often when it comes
to the public domain authors are users
and users are authors of copyrighted works.
And that's why today we are celebrating it here
at the United States Copyright Office.
With that I would like to invite up Whitney Levandusky,
an attorney with the Office of Public Information and Education
at the Copyright Office.
Whitney will talk a bit more
about the public domains importance and how it functions.
She'll also introduce our esteemed speakers for today.
So with that, I will turn it over to Whitney.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Whitney Levandusky: Thank you.
As we heard from Acting Register Karyn Temple,
we're here to celebrate the public domain, the next stage
of life for a creative work.
The Constitution allowed Congress to grant copyright,
but it also set forth that the protection was
for a limited time.
This limited nature is important
to the creative life of the United States.
Today, you will learn about the many angles
of the public domain.
How does it work for creative people?
How can it work for each of us?
And where can we find it?
We'll learn about how public domain works provide an ongoing
and renewable legacy of creativity.
We'll hear from a documentarian and a musical historian
about how the public domain assists and shapes their work.
We will also explore this rich background
and highlight some works and authors of those works
that are entering the public domain this year.
So, the public domain, it's not a place.
We can't find it on a map.
When we say public domain, we mean simply
that the work is not protected by copyright
and it's free for anyone to use.
The public domain is a wellspring of knowledge
and creativity that allows individuals at institutions
to supply new creativity and thought.
Vampires -
Pride and Prejudice.
The works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
These are just a few brief examples
about how we've used the public domain
to inspire new creative works.
The public domain gives us the ability
to stretch our imaginations, to take common touchstones
to new places, and re-evaluate long-standing works
in contemporary times.
While we are highlighting today the end of copyright term
as one way of growing the public domain, Karyn mentioned
that the public domain is far more than works
who copyright term has ended.
There are a number of other ways that work - that works are
in the public domain from their inception.
All works, for example created by federal employees
in the scope of their employment are in the public domain.
A small sampling of works created by employees
in the public trust include the fruits
of the works progress administration.
The first photograph of earth
by astronaut Bill Anders, titled Earth Rise.
Photographs from field work by government agencies.
Medical imageries -
Medical imagery, there we go.
And of course, studies and reports produced
by the government including the copyright office.
And oftentimes we use the public domain
to extend beyond creative works.
We use public domain to refer to the building blocks
of knowledge and creativity.
Things like facts, processes and systems, basic shapes,
social dances, short words and phrases.
All in all, the public domain is the wealth of resources
that are available to everyone.
Now there may be no more immediate example of inspiration
of public domain works than those penned by Shakespeare.
The Folger Shakespeare Library, which is just across the street
from us, it has the largest collection of materials relating
to Shakespeare and his works, which includes centuries
of adaptations on the stage, in music, in art and for film.
We will be using the long history
of Shakespearian inspiration as the focal point
to examine the important role
of public domain works and adaptation.
Our first presenter is Douglas Lanier.
He is the Professor of English at University of New Hampshire,
and a long term research fellow
at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
He did is graduate work at Duke University, and he specialized
in medieval and early modern drama.
He has taught at Duke, UCLA, Alleghany College, Gonville
and Caius College, Cambridge, the University of Milan
and University de Murcia in Spain.
His pioneering work in the study of modern adaptations
of Shakespeare in mass media will provide the foundation
for his insight into the cultural recirculation
of public domain works, the cultural after-life
and the elevation of works through adaptations over time.
His book, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture,
established the basic parameters of one
of the five most liveliest fields
of Shakespeare studies today.
He is currently at work on two book projects.
First, a history of screen adaptation
of an Othello worldwide, and second a study
of reparative Shakespeare, which are productions
of Shakespeare addressed to the traumas
of socially marginalized groups.
So please welcome me - in joining - in welcoming Douglas.
[ Applause ]
>> Douglas Lanier: Hello, can you hear me?
Of the original public - oops.
There we go.
The original public domain materials
in western culture are what we've come to call the classics
of Greek and Latin antiquity.
They did not begin their lives as classics.
These works were freely available for creative use,
rhetoricians call imitation,
by all who can master the written languages.
It was through their recirculation and adapted form
that they attained the status of a classic.
The word classic then specifies not some monumental steady
state, but the result of an ongoing dynamic,
always historically contingent process.
An important condition of which is the works availability
in the public realm.
And this process of classicizing involves a paradox.
The cultural after-life
of a work depends upon its being creatively altered, repurposed,
appropriated, made
into something other than its former self.
A work is effectively dead unless it has new readers
and audiences, new performers and adapters who allow it
to speak to a new present.
I'm going to dodge for the moment some very tricky
questions about politics and ethics
in this process of appropriation.
There's nothing to guarantee
that adaptations will be faithful to their sources
and nothing to guarantee
that adaptations will serve socially responsible purposes.
Here I want simply to observe that a condition
for art having a robust after-life is
that it is available for creative adaptation.
Now in the Anglophone literary tradition,
several artists have achieved the status of classics;
Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte
and Charles Dickens come immediately to mind.
But none has had a history of adaptation as long, as varied,
as global in scope as Shakespeare.
He is the Coca Cola of literature.
And through the - and though the reasons
for his extraordinary cultural after-life are many,
one key is that Shakespeare's work has long been
in the public domain.
And therefore, an irresistible object for adaptation.
Now it's possible to think
about Shakespearian adaptation from several angles.
One has to do with medium.
Shakespeare's dramatic writing needs to be converted
from its initial form as a script into a living performance
for any of his works to become a play.
Interestingly, Shakespeare's early cultural after-life
involve his being presented
in the public realm in two forms at once.
As a stage performance, developing in a number
of directions over the 18th and 19th century.
And as a printed book, first appearing as the first folio
in 1623 the printed collection that redefined Shakespeare
as an object for readers rather than theater audiences.
Now this two-track mode of adaptation, stage and print,
the two predominant literary modes
of the period may have much to do
with Shakespeare's status as a classic.
As new media emerged in cultural importance,
so too did Shakespeare become accommodated to them.
The 19th century for example was particularly keen
to adapt Shakespeare to the newly ascended form of opera
and instrumental music.
In the 20th century, here we go,
Shakespeare's writings have been adapted to all modes
of new media, advertising motion pictures, radio,
audio performance, television, digital text, even social media.
In the central function
of Shakespearian adaptation has been
to make new media formats seem less intimidating and alien,
to demonstrate their utility or lend them cultural authority.
This is particularly true at moments
where a new medium might seem
to threaten the cultural status quo; such was the case
with silent Shakespeare films in the early 20th century
or radio Shakespeare in the US in the mid-1930's.
In a process we call reciprocal legitimation Shakespeare serves
to legitimize the new medium,
while at the same time the new medium serves
to legitimize Shakespeare's status as a classic
and reconfirm his place
in the public realm for a new generation.
Now I should stress that this -
that each new media manifestation
of Shakespeare always involves reconceiving what Shakespeare
can be.
It's never just a matter of reformatting.
Film Shakespeare is very different
from stage Shakespeare, print Shakespeare,
televisional Shakespeare, radio Shakespeare.
Each of these media highlight certain elements
of Shakespeare's art and makes new perceptions
of his achievement possible.
We come to Shakespeare on film, with different expectations
of realism than we do with print Shakespeare
or stage Shakespeare.
The actors work and technique is different in film Shakespeare
than it is in audio or stage productions.
And how we experience our Shakespeare in the theater
and home, on a large or small screen, in live
or recorded format effects how we understand the nature
and significance of Shakespeare's art.
A new media can get us to think anew
about Shakespeare's own artistry.
In the opening speech of Henry V
for example the chorus expresses his dissatisfaction
with the stage apparatus of the globe theater.
The wooden O with small casques and an unworthy scaffold,
all that is inadequate to the epic greatness of Henry Campaign
in the vast fields of France.
Is Shakespeare here imagining the as yet, unborn medium
of modern film with its capacity to show
in wide screen splendor what Shakespeare can only ask his
audience to imagine in the mind's eye?
In other words, does filming Shakespeare's plays allow us
to see qualities that were there all along?
Shakespeare's cultural after-life is also dependent
on our ability to change the content of his work
to suit the tenor and taste of the time
and the purposes of adaptors.
Practically no stage production
of Shakespeare performs the text as written.
18th and 19th century dramatis routinely produced their own
versions of the plays, smoothing out the meter,
adding new characters and subplots,
ruthlessly cutting what they thought was obscure or body.
Even crafting happy endings or the tragedies
as Name Tate famously did for his 1681 King Lear,
the text of which ruled the stage for the next 150 years.
Adaptors have filled in the gaps in the lives
of Shakespeare's characters and of Shakespeare himself
with fully fleshed out fictional biographies,
prequels and sequels.
Some even inserting the author into the mix.
The film Shakespeare in Love
for example continues the long tradition
of imagining what we can't get from the historical record.
The process by which Shakespeare conceived
and wrote Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare's scripts are now routinely recontextualized
in all manners of settings, from the Tempest in Outer Space
to Macbeth in a mental hospital to Midsummer Night's Dream
in modern Hollywood to Othello in a southern prep school.
And film and television have long dressed
up Shakespeare's work in modern dress and language,
so that we're often watching Shakespeare
without knowing we're doing so.
My students are often surprised when I tell them
that 10 Things I Hate About You is an adaptation of the Taming
of the Shrew, or the Zombie romance Warm Bodies is a version
of Romeo and Juliet.
Indeed the increasingly oral and visual nature
of 21st century Shakespeare,
that is to say it's non-literary bent as well
as the globalization of Shakespeare,
which is to say Shakespeare in translation means
that our Shakespeare is much less centered
on the specificities of Shakespeare's language.
The wildly popular interactive performance piece Sleep No More,
by the British Performance Troop Punch Drunk uses Shakespeare's
Macbeth as its inspiration.
Not a word of Shakespeare's script is ever uttered
as the audience wanders through the company's meticulously
constructed environment and watches the silent actors.
Lastly, Shakespeare's availability
in the public realm becomes a vehicle for cultural dialog.
A shear terrain on which ideas can do battle or speak
across cultural divides.
With Shakespeare adaptors speak to the present
through a well-established common set of stories,
and they can also talk back to the past or protest injustice
by co-opting Shakespeare's inherited cultural authority.
The Tempest has long been recognized as a founding text
in the discourse of western colonialism.
A work that asserts the need to subjugate unruly native people's
but through adaptation the Tempest has become a powerful
mean to contest colonial discourse,
to assert a perspective untold in Shakespeare's original play.
In Aime Cesaire's adaptation Une Tempete,
the rebellious Caliban proud
of his African heritage eventually abandons the old
helpless prospero, gaining in the process victory
over his colonial tormentor.
In Shylock is my Name,
one of the recent Hogarth Shakespeare series,
a set of pros retellings of Shakespeare's plays,
Howard Jacobson depicts and erasable Shylock
who magically reappears in contemporary Manchester
to a modern lapsed Jew named Strolovich,
who is himself a victim of anti-Semitism.
In the novel, Shylock uses the situation
to answer Shakespeare's anti-Semitic portrayal of him
in the Merchant of Venice.
He engineers a way to replay the famous trial scene
on his own comic terms, so that both he
and Strolovich are redeemed.
The contemporary Indian filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj,
has made a trio of films that reimagined Indian culture,
I'm thinking of the films Maqbool, Omkara and Haider.
He uses his Shakespeare to comment on live issues
in Indian society, matters like organized crime
and civic corruption, the persistence of the caste system,
honor killing and terrorism.
The work of Bhardwaj and other contemporary,
non-Anglophone adaptors suggest
that Shakespeare is becoming a global Lingua Franca,
a set of plots, characters,
motifs and themes sufficiently familiar worldwide to open
up new possibilities of cross-cultural storytelling.
Let me end on two points, first the relationship
between cultural after-lives and adaptation
that I'm discussing is not unique to Shakespeare.
He illustrates well the paradox of art in the public realm.
That artworks robust cultural after-life depends upon its
being taken up and manipulated by later generations.
Not all of whom will be faithful to the original
or respectful of its intentions.
Cultural after-lives depend upon creative infidelity.
My second point is that if one takes the long historical view
adaptation has long been the cultural norm
in creative communities.
The notion that authors can exercise control
of after their works have entered the public arena is a
relatively new and culturally specific notion,
modern copyright dates from 1709.
And perhaps it's a historical aberration challenged
by the creative impulse to sample a new technology
that makes that especially easy to do.
How to sustain current concepts of copyright in the face
of contemporary adaptational practice seems
to me a question worth asking.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Whitney Levandusky: Thank you Doug.
So we know that the works of Shakespeare were never protected
under US copyright law.
But, what if all these adaptations
if they were protected under copyright,
how long does protection last?
Duration of copyright looks a lot different today
than it did in 1923.
For works created today, the general rule is that duration
of copyright is life of the author plus 70 years.
The works that expired on January 1, 2019 protect -
were protected under an original term
of 26 years and a renewal term.
The original term was secured by publication with notice,
or registration with the US Copyright Office.
The renewal term was secured only by registration
with the Copyright Office.
This renewal term, it was originally 26 years,
but through a series of acts by Congress,
the last one being the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension
Act, eventually the renewal term was extended to 69 years.
This - Congresses ability
to pass these extensions was affirmed by the Supreme Court
in Eldridge vs. Ashcroft.
As a result, these works first publisher registered
in 1923 secured a copyright term of 95 years.
This term structure, an original term
and a renewal term governs all works
that first secured protection prior to January 1, 1978.
There are many technical rules with duration
that I won't belabor today.
But know this, we will see a new crop
of works enter the public domain each year.
For example, works from 1924 will enter the public domain
in 2020.
1925, 2021 and so on.
The use of public domain images and footage helps us - oops,
helps us to build our sense of history.
They provide context to first person narratives.
An artist can claim - recast public domain works
to deepen our connections to the past.
For example, Peter Jackson's recent documentary,
They Shall Not Grow Old modified original footage
from World War I with colorization,
modern production techniques, sound effects and voice acting.
In this clip courtesy of the Imperial War Museum,
Jackson provides insight
into the thought process behind their interpretation
of public domain footage.
>> Peter Jackson: Hi, I'm Peter Jackson and I'm delighted
to present They Shall Not Grow Old as part
of the Imperial Museum Short Film Festival 2018.
[ Music ]
In the beginning we - we were feeling our way
through what's going to be.
And by the time we were finished, it really felt
like the natural thing to do.
Let them tell their story.
And they're not telling the story of why the song happened
or what - why [Inaudible] was such a disaster,
they're not telling that story.
They're just - they're just telling us what it was
like to be a soldier.
And with that being the sound track,
just purely voices it then became apparent
that we should try to present the images with as close
as we could to what they experienced.
And they didn't see the war in black and white for instance;
you know they saw the war in color.
But we didn't want to do reconstructions.
We could easily dress up a lot of guys in uniforms
and filmed some stuff today, but we didn't want to do that.
We wanted to use strictly accurate footage.
Somehow the net result on that is making these people
into human beings.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Whitney Levandusky: So to provide a firsthand account
of how documentarians take existing works as raw material
to create something new, we are please
to have Nina Gilden Seavey as a presenter today.
Seavey is an Emmy Award Winning documentarian
with a 30 year history in the non-fiction world.
Her films can be seen in theaters, on television
and ancillary media and in museums across the globe.
Seavey is a research professor of history and media
and public affairs at George Washington University.
And is the Director of the Documentary Center in the School
of Media and Public Affairs.
She will share with us the balance documentarian strike
when contending with images and clips that may
or may not be publically available.
She will also provide insight into the industry
around public domain materials and it's bearing
on creating historical documentaries.
So, please join me in welcoming Nina to the stage.
[ Applause ]
>> Nina Gilden Seavey: Thank you.
Well I'm not as famous as Peter Jackson,
but he and I share the same problems
of how do you create something out of the past?
Now in his World War I film he used public domain images
as archival material.
I mean it was literally artifact of a certain era,
about which he was making a very literal film.
Most documentary filmmakers are not doing that.
We're taking images that we need to represent a story
that we are shaping into an entirely different narrative.
So we're not using these images as artifact,
but we're using them as representation.
So I - because I am a professor I'm going
to give you a little assignment.
I am going to show you a clip from a film
that I made a trailer from my film A Paralyzing Fear
of the Story of Polio in America.
And this film posed a number of interesting challenges
about the public domain.
Because of course, filmmakers are omnivorous.
We need not one series of images,
we need thousands of images.
While I was sitting here, I was actually thinking
like how many - like what would be the average number of images
in the 90 minute film, which is what A Paralyzing Fear was.
So I thought well an image on the screen changes
about once every five seconds, right?
So theoretically you could have somewhere between 900
and 1,000 images that need to be somehow collected
and in any given film, and you need to either own the right
to that material, or it has to be in the public domain,
which means it's not - it's free and you can use it at will.
Well the problem for documentary filmmakers is
that we are not just an omnivorous group,
but we're an impoverished group.
And so this issue of what do we use
and how do we use it becomes kind of an interesting,
I wouldn't say it's a game that we play,
but it is a little bit of one.
And there has become, because of the kind of voracious appetite
that documentary filmmakers have we have become a bit
of an industry for the both materials that are in copyright
and that which is entered into the public domain.
Now, the good news for documentary filmmakers is
that we don't have to wait very long because for you know,
unlike Shakespeare where we had to wait for many,
many years for that to enter the public domain,
in documentary much of what has come
into the public domain were works created
by the Federal Government themselves, which is interesting
because the Federal Government is indeed a very large producer
of filmed work.
So there is an unending repository
that I send my students out into College Park Maryland
and they have to go look, like on a treasure hunt
for some of these images.
Because they are fertile territory for great stories
and the kinds of material that we love to use in films,
because A, there's a lot of it.
And B, it's free.
So, hence my assignment to you, which is to take a look
at this clip and I'm going to talk to you a little bit
about the problems and the opportunities of public domain
as related to this particular film.
It's a little five minute clip.
I kind of pulled a little bit of a fast one on our AV people,
so the people who are livestreaming this may not be
able to get it because I'm going
to show another film a little bit later along
that is definitely not in the public domain.
But this one is the trailer for A Paralyzing Fear,
the Story of Polio in America, which is also on YouTube.
So, follow me along and take a look at this clip
and then we're going to talk about the conundrum
of public domain in documentary.
[ Music ]
[ Film ]
Okay thank you.
So here was the problem.
When I decided to make this film, the - I went to the March
of Dimes and I said, "I want to make a film about Polio."
And they said, "Well you an everybody else who has ever come
to us, and the answer is no."
Because they owned all of the rights to all of the material.
So not being one to ever take no for an answer, I begged
and I pleaded and I collected all of the best historians
of science and medicine and many famous people who had had Polio
and they lobbied on my behalf.
And finally the March of Dimes said, "Okay we're going
to let you be the first filmmaker
that we have ever given our archive to.
There is a warehouse in Fort Lee, New Jersey
and we don't know how many films are there,
and how many photographs.
But we're going to give you the key."
So I got my trusted crew together
and got an 18 wheeler truck and we went
up to Fort Lee, New Jersey.
And sure enough we pulled out 3,000 films
and 5,000 photographs.
It's an interesting amount of material.
So, I started looking at this stuff and I thought
to myself, well wait a minute.
The Federal Government was involved in the fight
against Polio, so a lot of this is their footage.
And as we find out in this piece
and as you probably know already,
the person who really led the fight
against Polio was FDR, as President.
And so a lot of that material was also taken during the time
that he was President of the United States.
And was in the FDR Library at Warm Springs.
And so honestly I started to question a little bit the March
of Dimes claim on this material.
Now, we came to what we call a blanket license.
I paid them a heap of money, they give me a heap of film
and photographs, everybody goes home happy.
But, in the question of what was in the public domain,
it really became kind of a bit of a head scratcher for me.
Because I thought wait a minute, they are claiming copyright
to something that I know for a fact they don't own.
But I decided we're going to leave that to the side
for the moment because some of the material,
I mean they were a private foundation with monies raised
through private funds.
And so a lot of it was theirs.
But it was all mixed together.
And hence, the problem for the documentarian.
Is that there is - we live in the era of motion picture
and have since the beginning of the 20th century.
And where this material comes from
and how do you trace it back becomes a bit of a puzzle.
Well that puzzle becomes I think ever more interesting
because somewhere, somewhere along the line,
especially after the cable industry entered sort
of the documentary filmmaking world with the History Channel
and Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel,
and all of these other channels.
And the need for documentary films just exploded,
so did the need for material
around which these films would be made.
So, many enterprising young entrepreneurs came
to Washington, to the Library of Congress where we are today
and to the National Archives where we are down the street,
and they copied everything, which is interesting, right?
Because what they did is they took everything that was
in the public domain, and you have all of these filmmakers
from all around the world who was omnivorous
and finance starved as I am and they sell the material
that is in the public domain.
They don't call it a right's fee,
they call it you know an acquisition fee
or an administrative fee.
But in fact, what you're doing is you're paying for the rights
to public domain material because you're sitting
out in Omaha, Nebraska
and Nebraska Public Television wants you
to make a nice documentary about you know,
an issue for which there is plenty
of public domain material.
It's going to cost a lot of money to send you
to the National Archive, plus you probably don't have the time
that it takes, which his six weeks
to get the material we produced.
So, there is an industry that has actually developed
around public domain material because we are
as I said a voracious consumer of material.
So - but there is still a lot of question.
Just in that little clip alone there are I don't know,
over 100 images, right?
From the past and I can promise you that the March of Dimes,
nor any other rights holder knows who owns what to whom.
We do know that probably the -
you know the Walt Disney Material,
we know who owns that, right?
But aside from that I can promise you nobody else is quite
clear on the - on that subject.
So, it's an interesting problem of how do you tether out
and documentary filmmakers, I'm not going to bore you
with the legalities of this.
I mean lawyers kind of owing - owning our lives.
We all documentary filmmakers carry errors
and admissions insurance.
And that guarantees to a broadcaster
that when we bring something to them, that they're not going
to libel for violation of copyright,
but rather we take the responsibility.
We take the liability for any error that we may have incurred
so that nobody is held responsible
at the network level, but the documentary filmmaker is going
to take all the responsibility on him or herself,
which is quite a burden.
But the fact is is that trying to parse
out where does this stuff come from, who owns it and when it is
in the public domain why am I really paying for it?
Because it has become a very large profitable industry
for many companies, and I salute them for their you know,
their enterprise that have managed to take kind
of the cabilzation of American life and turned it
into quite a profitable business for them.
The last little bit I'm going to talk about is the confusion
between - amongst documentary filmmakers and the public
at large about what is in public domain and what is fair use.
Fair use, and my students do this all the time.
"Oh I can use that, its fair use.
It's on YouTube."
Uh oh -
There is a common belief that if it's out there,
and I can get it, it's mine.
And fair use and I'm not going to go
into you know the complications of it,
is actually a fairly limited classification
under which a documentary filmmaker
or someone else can take a piece of material
that is indeed copyrighted and used for their own purposes.
One of those - the central premise of fair use is
that the rights holder, if you're creating a polemic
of something and they would have every reason not to grant you -
not to grant you copyright in this issue of the polemic
and it's kind of part of - in the public discourse then
that is a pretty legitimate fair use claim.
I'm going to show you a clip from my most recent work
and this cannot be streamed because the question
of fair use has yet to be fought on this one.
But it does pose sort of an interesting challenge
to who owns what and how much documentary filmmakers sort
of claim for themselves.
Anyway, this is a clip from my new project called My Fugitive.
And will not be streamed.
What I found, and I'm not going to tell you everything.
The project will drop on May 4, 2020,
which is the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Murders,
was the connection between what happened to Howard Becanick
and his other co-defendants.
And the investigation into the conspiracy
to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King.
So, the question as to what is going to enter into fair use
on this particular project is going to be kind
of a long and protractive one.
I have great legal representation.
So - but it is an interesting kind of conundrum -
for documentary filmmakers between what is
in the public domain and what is available to us for fair use,
which is an altogether other and interesting dialog.
On that note, I'd like to conclude, and I thank you
for your time and appreciate your attention.
[ Applause ]
>> Whitney Levandusky: Thank you Nina.
So one of the things that Nina touched on was the essential
and sometimes difficult issue of access,
that idea of sending students out to College Park
to do the treasure hunt for government works.
Access to public domain works is as important
to the public domain as the public domain itself.
You can find and use public domain works at a number
of cultural institutions
from your local library to a national museum.
Here at the copyright office we have much
of our records available to the public.
Our production as government workers,
and we are expanding the number and type of records
that we can make public available online.
The Library of Congress has many of its collections scant
and available for use.
In the films that we're sharing today come
from the Packard Campus of the Library of Congress.
The Packard Campus has a screening room and theater
in Culpepper, Virginia.
In addition, there are many private
and non-profit online resources for public domain works,
including Project Gutenberg, HathiTrust,
Amazon, Kindle and Google.
So, onto musicals.
A quintessentially American art form.
From the late 19th century to today musicals have evolved
in form, narrative and production.
This year, musical works
from multiple productions enter the public domain,
including the Rise of Rose O'Reilly by George M. Cohan,
A Perfect Lady by George Gershwin, Music Box Revue
by Irving Berlin and the Wallflower by Oscar Hammerstein.
Our next presenter is Benjamin West.
A director, producer, performer,
writer and musical theater historian.
His current projects include the Showtime Trilogy,
Direct from Proctors 23rd Street Theater
for one night only, January 16, 1920.
And 514 Broadway.
West's directing credits include Unsung Caroline Lee
for Lincoln Center's American Songbook, Gatsby the Songs
and Concert, Make Mine Manhattan and the Fig Leaves are Falling.
His Broadway credits include assistant director and drama
for Old Acquaintance, assistant producer for August Osage County
and the Homecoming, and product assistant for Talk Radio.
He is the founder of Unsung Musical Company,
a 2017 recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award.
He will share with us a case study in the use
of public domain works from his documentary musical series The
Showtime Trilogy.
The second installment of this trilogy entitled 45 Minutes
from Coon Town, a Celebration of Black Musical Theater,
tracing its history from the late 1800's
through 1999 will open on September 12,
2019 at the York Theater Company in New York City.
So, without further ado Benjamin West.
[ Applause ]
>> Benjamin West: Good morning.
Thank you Whitney.
I am Ben West, and I am a musical theater artist
and historian.
My focus and my passion is really two fold.
One illuminating the intersection of past, present
and future, effectively how successive generations
of artists and audiences continue to influence
and inform one another, and two exploring how the American
musical is a reflection of American consciousness.
So effectively it's capturing our social, cultural
and political sensibilities at any moment
in time throughout its history.
There are two quotes that speak to both of these themes
and I happen to love, one is by a lyricist
and composer Harold Rome,
who was a tremendous Broadway review writer,
and also wrote a number of book musicals, Destry Rides Again
and Fanny are two of his shows.
And he says whether you want to be original, or whether you want
to be conventional you still have to know what has been done
in order to be either.
This is a quote that I particularly love.
And the other one is from YipHarburg who you'll know
as the lyricist of the Wizard of Oz,
of Brother Can you Spare a Dime
and a number of Broadway musicals.
And he says, "A songwriter is really a journalist
of time with music."
So both of these quotes certainly feed me
and I think feed my focus.
And with these two focuses I'm looking a lot at writers,
creators, craftsman of the form and my projects tend to deal
with the history of the American musical
in some way, shape or form.
And in dealing with the history
of the American musical I am working a lot
with public domain materials.
And in fact all five of these songs that you see
up here are currently in public domain, and all five
of these songs are also incorporated
into my current project, which is the Showtime Trilogy.
And with that, I'll give you a brief background on the trilogy
and then we're going to look at two specific sequences
so we can have a sense of how public domain works are used
in the creation of this new work.
The Showtime Trilogy is a project I began developing
about five years ago now, almost five years ago and research
for the piece has taken me to more than 20 different archives
across the country, including here in DC,
the Library of Congress of course, the copyright office
and actually also Howard University, I should mention.
The trilogy is three documentary musicals which celebrate
and chart the history of the American musical.
Now the project aims to be comprehensive in its coverage,
so we go back to minstrelsy and vaudeville in the 1800's.
We move through the turn of the century musical burlesque
and American operetta, George M. Cohan and so forth,
all the way to the works of George C. Wolfe
and Jason Robert Brown in the 1990's and the cut off point
for the project is 1999.
In terms of the documentary musical construct.
It is a form that I've been developing
over the past several years,
and I do believe it's unique in its form.
We are essentially weaving live music and live performance
through this non-fiction historical narrative
to tell the story of the American musical.
Now each piece is designed as a solo show.
And the narrator is very much an omniscient vessel,
through whom the history flows forth,
and in whom the various styles of music
and performance are embodied.
Each piece, I should also mention is fully scripted
and so it is a fully scripted musical.
Again, it's non-fiction, so we're not talking
about a historical or biographic dramatization,
but it's actually documentary in nature.
And as such, we're utilizing narration, quotes,
newspaper articles and existing songs to tell this story
of a uniquely American art form.
And it's very much; I should point out an active story.
It's a very active, theatrical story.
And in terms of the songs the trilogy all told uses more
than 100 songs in the telling of this story, 100 existing songs.
And that's 100 - more than 100 songs
over all three installments.
So, I'll break down quickly the installments for you.
The first installment and primary entry is Showtime,
the First 100 years of the American Musical.
And this really looks at the evolution of the form itself
and its cultural impact.
And just a quick example of what I mean
by the evolution of the form.
New York Time article 1907 this is - it reads in part talking
about the form about the musical, this American musical.
New York Times 1907, "Fashions in plays may change,
but musical comedy remains about the same from beginning to end.
It is taken as a matter of course
that the tunes will be reminiscent.
The characters are nearly always the same and the comedy in many
of these shows is the saddest feature.
There are, as a rule, only two classes of musical comedy.
The good and the bad."
And then we jump forward 40 years and Alan J. Lerner,
who you'll know as the author of My Fair Lady
and Brigadoon speaking about the American musical, again 1947.
And he says, "The musical theater
in America is becoming a vital medium of dramatic expression.
With words, music and movement, blended together
in complete synchronization a real art form is revealed."
So Showtime is essentially looking at this evolution
from minstrelsy, vaudeville, early musical comedy
into the real art form being revealed and through to the 90s.
I'll also point out this first installment premiered this past
September at the Theater at St. Peter's.
And the second installment 45 Minutes
from Coon Town will premier this coming September
at the same venue.
45 Minutes from Coon Town is specifically
about Black musicals and Black writers in particular.
And the third and final installment is 68 Ways to Go,
which is about female musical theater, writers
and that will premier in 2020.
And then the plan is to premier the trilogy in its entirety
in 2021 where we will have each show in succession.
Now that's the trilogy and we'll take a look at two sequences
from the primary entry Show time the First 100 years
to give a sense of how public domain material has been used
in creating the narrative and creating the peace.
Showtime the First 100 years,
the primary entry utilizes 59 existing songs in total,
21 of those are public domain
and 38 are still under copyright.
The show is two acts, including the intermission it runs
about 2:20, 2:25.
We'll look at two specific songs that are
in Showtime the first 100 Years.
They are Jazz Baby and Prohibition Blues.
Completely coincidentally both are from 1919
and both are co-authored by a female writer.
Jazz Baby has lyrics by Blanche Merrill
and Prohibition Blues has music by Nora Bayes.
Now when we encounter these songs in Showtime it's
in a scene that deals with the early 20th century.
We begin the scene talking about the various musical styles
that are spreading across the stage at that time.
And then we get to rag time and its evolution into jazz.
And you'll see we come to Jazz Baby here.
So, just a brief point about part
of the language of the show.
The lyric in almost all of the songs was specifically chosen
to filter into the narrative, to become part of the narrative.
So we mention rag time evolving,
but we don't actually mention jazz.
And so the question of into what does it evolve is answered
through the song.
So music comes in and we have the first chorus of jazz baby
and then you'll see music under at the bottom of that.
Again another part of the language in storytelling
in this particular show, music is woven through the narrative
through much of the show.
So you'll see music will continue
under for an Irving Berlin quote.
And again speaking further to the language
of the show you'll see a parenthetical
that says down beats only.
Then we have one line of dialog
and then we have music full for the quote.
Music and also acoustic sounds effects that are made
by the drummer and his various toys are used throughout the
show, throughout the entire piece
as really connective tissue, and also as oral quotation marks.
So, when you see - we're going to show a video clip of this,
you'll see that there's going to be just downbeats only
for two bars where we set up the quote, and then music will come
in fully under the quote itself.
So, it's to help differentiate and delineate
between what is narration and what is the actual quote.
Following the Irving Berlin quote we go into another bit
of Jazz Baby and then you'll see music under - at the bottom
of the screen here, stop time.
So we're going to go music under again,
this time for a Rosamond Johnson quote.
He was an early Black composer.
And this is going to be speaking about Negro spirituals
and the routes of this form and essentially harking back
to slavery - harkening back to slavery.
And in so doing the feel of the underscore is entirely different
than the feel of the more celebratory Irving Berlin quote.
We're going to be in stop time, which you'll see in a moment.
And also you'll notice that it's going to go minor
in what we're talking about.
And music will cut out after that, so I'll stop there,
and then we're going to take a look at the video right now.
I want to mention just three quick points.
My music collaborator for the entire trilogy,
all three installments is Fran Menaric
who has created all new arrangements for all
of the songs, and helped me to weave them
through the narrative quite literally.
Our director and musical stager
for Showtime the First 100 years is Shannon Lewis.
And then at the beginning of the clip there is a drum roll,
that's not actually part of the script.
That is just setting up the clip;
so disregard the drum roll.
All right, so let's take a look at this Jazz Baby sequence.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
So that is a bit of the Jazz Baby sequence.
And in fact, it continues right on.
There's no break from the Rosamond Johnson quote,
we go into a socio political section,
small sociopolitical section.
Because again, one of the themes being the American musical
as a reflection of our social consciousness.
So again from Rosamond Johnson we go directly
into a section about Black writers.
And so I actually have a question for everyone here.
I wonder if anyone can name any Black musical theater writers
working early 20th century, 1900 to 1930?
Any guesses?
[ Inaudible ]
Yes.
[ Inaudible ]
Yes, Colin Johnson for sure.
Yes, awesome.
Great. So there were actually quite a few Black writers
working on Broadway in the early 20th century,
relatively speaking.
Certainly the form was still dominated by White men.
But there were a tremendous number of Black artists.
I'll point out Bob Cole who you mentioned,
who I consider the father of Black musical theater.
He is - he devised what is considered the first full length
legitimate Black musical comedy, A Trip to Coon Town.
This was in 1897 and that is the Coon Town that we reference
in our 45 Minutes from Coon Town title.
And I'll also mention at the top there, James P. Johnson
and then toward the middle Cecil Mack
because they wrote the Charleston,
which you heard earlier.
And that was from 1923, which you pointed
out from a Black musical called Running Wild.
And then from the Black author section we jump right
into female writers and so again I wonder,
can anyone name any female musical theater writers working
early 20th century, 1900's to 1930?
Any guesses?
There were also quite a number of women working.
Dorothy Fields, I think you probably -
if you don't know the name, you probably know her work.
I can't give you anything but Love Baby, on the Sunny Side
of the Street, a number of pop standards.
I want to also call attention to Alma Sanders who is
at the bottom right of the screen.
Because her, a bit of her story speaks
to how essentially the social dynamics are informing the
American musical.
She eventually moved to New York, but was actually living
in Detroit when she began her career.
She would eventually marry her lyricist,
her lyric writing partner.
He would be her second husband.
She was married to her first husband at the time though
in Detroit, who wanted to get a divorce from her.
And she was on the cusp of breaking
through in the musical theater.
She would go on to write a handful of shows in the 20's
and in 1921 is when the divorce happened.
So I'll read, this is from the Detroit Free Press March 1921.
"Ernest E. Benjamin was granted a divorce from his wife,
the well-known song writer Alma Sanders.
Benjamin testified that his wife's success
in writing two song hits turned her head.
And she refused to keep house any longer.
[ Laughter ]
Or, to live in Detroit.
He said she spent much of her time in New York coming
and going as she pleased."
So that's just a fun little bit.
I'm in the midst of writing the women's show right now,
we start readings next week.
So I enjoy her story.
And so then, from female writers we cap this jazz
and sociopolitical sequence with prohibition blues
and we get there - again we're early 20th century;
so that's women's right to vote being ratified in 1920,
also income tax and prohibition.
So again, prohibition blues brings us back
to the jazz vernacular.
We'll play the prohibition blues clip now and then I'll pop
up the script page for it immediately after.
So, this is prohibition blues.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
And I just want to mention again, the music is
by Nora Bayes who is one
of the first female musical theater composers,
who I happen to love.
She was a very big vaudeville and stage star.
And so here's just a quick look at the script page
for prohibition blues.
Again you'll see we cap the idea
of social consciousness at the top.
We go into prohibition blues, again part of the language,
the music will continue under for a final quote about jazz
to wrap up and come full circle with this jazz sequence
and then we move forward.
Just in terms of using the songs in the narrative
and in telling the story these two songs were used almost
in their entirety, but that's not the case
with all of the songs.
In some cases we use just two or three lines,
in some cases we just use a chorus; so it really depends
on the needs of the specific moment
and how the song is utilized in the story telling.
And with that I think I have completed.
So that is how essentially the songs are used in the show.
And thank you for your time.
[ Applause ]
>> Whitney Levandusky: Thank you so much Ben.
Before we go, there is a fourth speaker
that we were hoping to have here today.
I want to take a moment to highlight a powerful example
of how the use of public domain works can help us better
understand ourselves and our current time.
Nina's presentation highlighted
for us the way documentarians use the public domain
to bring truth and understanding to often difficult
and painful experiences.
We were hoping to have Taina Caragol,
Curator at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery join
us today to discuss the works included
in the recent exhibition, Unseen our past in a new light,
to highlight a similar practice among visual artists.
Unfortunately because of the government shutdown,
she is unable to participate in the event today.
Caragol co-curated with Osman Naim the works
of Ken Gonzalez Day and Titus Kafar to product an exhibition
that considers the intersections between portraiture,
nation building and museum practice.
A brief warning before we begin,
the images that follow directly content with America's history
of slavery and lynching.
Gonzalez Day photographs historical objects,
be they from archives or museums and suggests new meanings
for them by thoughtfully altering their composition
or display.
Here we have two works from his erased lynching series.
This series Gonzalez Day tells us was sparked in response
to anti-immigration rhetoric that directly led to an increase
in vigilante activity along the US/Mexican border
in the early 2000's.
Each image is a recasting of lynching photograph
that took place in the United States between 1850 and 1942.
Where Gonzalez Day rephotographs the image and removes the victim
and the hanging materials from the composition.
Gonzalez Day has researched and uncovered 350 cases of lynching
in the state of California alone as detailed in his book,
Lynching in the West, 1850 to 1935.
As Caragol states, in unseen's catalog rather
than inflicting more violence upon the victims,
Gonzalez Day directs our attention to perpetrators
and bystanders to consider mob violence nationwide,
exposing the vulnerability of African Americans, Latinos,
Native Americans, Jews and immigrant communities.
Their absent bodies stand for their untold histories
against the myth of a White Anglo American identity.
Titus Kafar paints in the tradition
of Euro American Colonial portraiture,
but then adds a contemporary layer that is often physical,
such as cutting, shrouding or smearing the canvas.
Before us we have a well-known portrait
of Thomas Jefferson shrouding or revealing the portrait
of an enslaved Black woman.
In Kafar's words, "This portrait is at once
about Sally Mae Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson,
as well as the many woman who's liberty was taken from them.
And whose tragic relationships have been shrouded
by historically inaccurate narratives of deified men
in positions of power."
The process of hiding the known and revealing the unknown,
according to co-curator Osma Naim makes us realize
that history is complex.
It's messy.
And filled with many different perspectives,
and that ultimately our understanding
of the past is more complete when more
of our stories can be told.
Both Gonzalez Day and Kafar use public domain works
to probe foundational myths in order to reclaim a space
for those left unseen.
I would encourage you to seek out both their works not only
as an illustration of the power of using the public domain,
but also to challenge how each of us sees
and understands our place in the United States.
Now, we are essentially out of time for today.
But I would like to invite anyone who wishes to stay
after for an informer Q&A with our presenters and thank you.
We will have Katie Rowland bring us home.
[ Applause ]
>> Katie Rowland: Thank you everyone and thank you
for joining our celebration of the Lifecycle of Copyright.
As Whitney said we're going to conclude our program now,
thanking all of our panelists.
If anyone would like to welcome - join me in thanking them
for their participation -
[ Applause ]
Thank you all and we're so happy you could enjoy our celebration
of the life cycle of copyright with us.
Until our next event on April 25,
which is about the world IP day, about going for the gold
in sports, we'll see you then.
Thank you.
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