June 3, 2009Newsletter

I hope you've got SILVERDOCS on your calendar, and will be joining us for the CSM panel, "It's 2014! Do you know where your public media is?" I can't wait to hear media execs brainstorm on the fly. Here's another hope: I hope you watch our new video, "Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend," and forward it to every person in your network!

My best to you, 

Pat Aufderheide

SILVERDOCS

Don't miss the chance to attend the SILVERDOCS film festival and conference June 15-22 in Silver Spring, MD. SILVERDOCS is one of the Center's favorite sponsorhips. It is also one of the leading documentary festivals in the world, drawing industry and artistic leading lights to Sky Sitney's brilliant programming. Furthermore, at the SILVERDOCS conference, organized by Diana Ingraham, you get to hear those leading lights talk about the state of the field. This year, the Center had a hand in two panels: the June 17 panel providing a peak into the future, about The Future of Public Media, and the June 19 panel The Legal 411 On Film and Media In The Classroom with Aufderheide and Washington College of Law's Peter Jaszi. More details on the conference available here. Purchase your tickets here! 

Reel Journalism 

Join the Newseum and American University School of Communication in presenting the final film in the annual film series Reel Journalism. This series showcases classic and contemporary films depicting journalists' integral role in American life.The final film is A Mighty Heart on June 1st. Read more here and buy your tickets today.

Beyond Broadcast 2009

Last chance to sign up for this year's Beyond Broadcast! The conference, which the Center is co-organizing and co-sponsoring, is June 3-6 at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School. The theme is: Public Service Media from Local to Global. The Center's Jessica Clark, a co-organizer of the conference, is also convening a panel on impact measurement for mission-driven media. Register today at beyondbroadcast.net, and feel free to sign in to the Beyond Broadcast social network site, where conversations are blooming. We're using the same social networking site as last year, so if you're already signed up, you can use the same log in.

Arts Engine's Media that Matters Festival

The Center is delighted to co-sponsor Arts Engine's Ninth Annual Media that Matters Film Festival on Wednesday, June 3 at the SVA Visual Arts Theater in NYC. Arts Engine is a real engine of independent creativity, and its annual festival (soon to go online!) showcases amazing work by emerging creators. Be among the first to see this year's 12 inspiring selections! More information is available at mediathatmattersfest.org

The Center is proud to be a co-sponsor of The Prenups: What Filmmakers and Funders Should Talk About Before Tying the Knot, available on June 8th. Developed by Active Voice in close collaboration with independent producers, funders, foundation affinity groups, scholars, and issue experts --including us-- this peer-to-peer resource is designed to improve communication and collaborations on social-issue media projects. Take a look!

Chronicle of Philanthropy's Social Good Podcast with Jessica Clark 

The Chronicle of Philanthropy is the premiere newspaper of the nonprofit world. Listen to Jessica Clark's fifteen minute podcast on the paper's new podcast series Social Good, hosted by web expert Allison Fine. They discuss the future of public media and whether nonprofit models will help to save newspapers.

Regulating Media 2.0

This month CSM director Pat Aufderheide participated in the Quello Center's annual symposium on communications and media policy "Rethinking Media Policy in the Age of New Media." Read more here>>>

Inspiring Testimony on the Future of Journalism

On May 6th, the Senate heard testimony on the Future of Journalism. Alberto Ibarguen, the president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, described the role of public media 2.0. Read on to hear what he had to say.

New Podcasts from American Forum with Pat Aufderheide

As a part of AU's School of Communication's American Forum, Pat Aufderheide recently spoke with associate professor in-residence Danna Walker about two key issues: public media and fair use. Be sure to give these conversations a listen! To listen in: Fair Use podcast, Public Media podcast

Public Media 2.0 Showcase: Opposing Views

In our Public Media 2.0 Showcase we examine Opposing Views, an online discussion forum that brings together experts and the public to wrestle with current issues. This site draws inspiration from the words of John F. Kennedy, "Without debate, without criticism, no public can survive." This website affords the opportunity to engage in critical debate on current issues. Read more here>>>

Free Press Calls For More and Better Public Media

This year's Free Press Summit on May 14th provided a showcase for the media reform organization and for cogent policy suggestions for Obama's media reform agenda. Read more here>>>

New Video -Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend

Last summer the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video nearly crashed our servers with the glut of people downloading the document. Based on this demand, we created a related video Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend. Please tell your friends, and embed or link to it! Read more here>>>

Watch it here

Fair Use and Academic Freedom: Here Come the Communication Scholars

At the annual meeting of the International Communication Association a group of scholars formed a committee to create a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Communication Scholarship. Chris Boulton, a grad student at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, kicked it off with a story of not being permitted to file his M.A. thesis until he took out all copyrighted material. The problem was that the copyrighted material--pictures of children's fashion advertisements--were his core data. Read more here>>>

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Hearings

This month Center's director Pat Aufderheide supported teacher and documentary filmmaker allies who were presenting their cases at the hearings in D.C. They represented two communities advocating for exemptions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. She wrote a two part blog series on her work there.

Part 1: DMCA, Fair Use and Educators

Part 2: DMCA, Fair Use, Documentary Filmmakers and Remixers

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Dance Collections

Dance archivists, librarians and museum curators face questions about fair use every day. Now they have answers in the form of the Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use for Dance-Related Materials, available at danceheritage.org/fairuse. The Center for Social Media, with the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the Washington College of Law, is proud to have contributed to this report authored by the Dance Heritage Coalition.

Fair Use Question of the Month: Citing Your Sources

Every month the Center for Social Media answers a new question concerning fair use. This month's question deals with citing your sources --specifically in the context of creating online video. Read more here>>>

Games for Change Conference

On May 28-29, Center's associate director Alison Hanold attended the Games for Change conference in New York. The use of interactivity in documentary film has increased tremendously with the evolution of online community building and promotion, but has interactive media evolved to the point where a documentary can be a game? Read more here>>>

MIT's Tech TV Features Center's Work

Three of the Center's short videos, Holler To The Hood, Anacostia River Project and How Not To Make A Documentary have been recently featured on MIT's Comparative Media Studies website. Watch all three films here.

Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar on Filmmaking

In March filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar visited American University to discuss their filmmaking and editing process for their Emmy award-winning film A Lion in the House. They described their shooting set-up, their approach to filming verité footage and interviews, and what they believe the role of documentarians should be. Their presentation was both helpful and inspirational, as you can see in these video clips from their visit.

Highlights from Jennie Livingston's Visit

On April 1 acclaimed filmmaker Jennie Livingston came to American University for a screening of her groundbreaking documentary Paris is Burning. She also showed the short fiction film Who's the Top?, which has been screened at more than 100 film festivals. Livingston then took the opportunity to engage in conversation and answer questions about her films and her filmmaking process. See highlights of the conversation here.

Update on Code of Best Practices in Sustainable Filmmaking

As co-creator of the Code of Best Practices in Sustainable Filmmaking, Larry Engel will be spending the summer promoting the Code at upcoming festivals and conferences, accompanied by his co-author Andrew Buchanan, when possible via Skype. If you haven't had a chance to read the Code yet, it helps filmmakers assess the carbon dioxide (CO2) footprints of their productions and find ways to reduce, neutralize, and offset them.

Engel will participate in a session on Friday, June 12th in Savannah, Georgia at the Blue Ocean Film Festival. He will be at SILVERDOCS in Washington, DC on June 18th. Two more sessions will be held at the UFVA annual conference in New Orleans in August and at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in September. Read more here>>>

Reelisor Features Sustainable Filmmaking Code

Reelisor, the new online cooperation platform for the entire European documentary film business, featured our Sustainable Filmmaking Code this month. Reelisor works closely with filmmakers all over Europe and will share the Code in this process of collaboration.

Other News

On June 2nd, 5:30-7:00 pm, Internews--a media nonprofit that works to increase local media access on a global level--will honor media makers that work to empower local media around the world at the 2009 Media Leadership Awards in Washington DC.
For more details please visit their website here.