#1: Copyright

The practice of found footage filmmaking has changed tremendously in the digital age, elevating copyright to a key topic. For the opening session of This is Film!, Eye has invited an authority on this matter to discuss the role of copyright in access to archival film collections, and found footage filmmaking practices.

Lecture

In this lecture, guest lecturer Claudy Op den Kamp explains how copyright is differently ‘activated’ in art and cinema contexts, addressing - amongst other examples - the Film ist. trilogy (1998-2009) by Gustav Deutsch.

Introduction by Giovanna Fossati (Chief Curator at Eye and Professor of Film Heritage at the University of Amsterdam). Q&A in collaboration with the Master students of the This is Film! class at the University of Amsterdam.

Film ist.

As part of this lecture, Eye presents a special version of the trilogy Film ist. by Gustav Deutsch on the Eye Film Player.

Gustav Deutsch, who passed away in 2019, was a master of the found-footage film genre. Deutsch scoured through film archives all over the world to find the images he wanted for his film collages. He has been called a ‘film-maker without a camera’ and a ‘found footage juggler’.

When cinema celebrated its centenary in 1995, Deutsch became interested in the phenomenology of film. "An investigation into the character of film", is how he describes the project Film ist. The first part focuses on the technical side through scientific and educational films, the second part focuses on the early days and examines the new medium of film as an art form. Deutsch had a close relationship with Eye and in the trilogy Film ist. he drew heavily from Eye’s collection.

Guest

Claudy Op den Kamp is the author of The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen (2018), a book that bridges film archival and legal studies and was published within the Framing Film series of Amsterdam University Press and Eye Filmmuseum. Op den Kamp is Programme Leader of the BA (hons) Film programme at Bournemouth University, where she is also a researcher at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management. She holds a PhD from Plymouth University on the relationship between copyright ownership, access to archival film, and film historiography. She is co-editor of A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects (Cambridge University Press, 2019).