Throughout Black History Month we are celebrating the struggle and triumph of the civil rights movement with screenings of Eyes on the Prize Part 1: Awakenings. Eyes on the Prize is the most renowned civil rights documentary of all time; for many people, it is how they first learned about the Civil Rights Movement (more about the film). But this film has not been available on video or television for the past 10 years simply because of expired copyright licenses. Join us in building a new mass audience for this film: organize or attend a screening in your city, town, library, school, or home.
Most Important Civil Rights Documentary Ever
Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning documentary series that many consider a foundation of our collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement. It's the most vidid portrayal of the civil rights movement and for millions of people, it's the foundation for understanding what happened. Makers of Eyes on the Prize brought together extensive historical footage from the period and featured ordinary people who helped change the course of history for the better. No other book or movie has comprehensively brought together this much footage or has become a more common reference on the civil rights movement.
Sunk by Copyright
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But "Happy Birthday" is just the beginning. Eyes on the Prize is made up of news footage, photographs, songs and lyrics from the Civil Rights Movement that are tangled up in a web of licensing restrictions. Many of these licenses had expired by 1995 and the film's production company, Blackside, could not afford the exorbitant costs of renewing them. "Eyes on the Prize" has been unavailable to the public ever since.
How could this happen?
Copyright law has expanded out of control, and its public mission is no longer being served. Copyright was originally designed to encourage creativity and innovation--much like patent law. But for the past 50 years multi-national corporations like Disney and the major record labels have aggressively lobbied Congress to expand and expand and expand the reach of copyright law. Instead of lasting 20 years and requiring registration (like patents do) copyright has become automatic and now corporate copyrights last 90 years.
In addition to the excessive 90 year copyright, corporations have created a legal environment that effectively strips the free speech rights of documentary filmmakers and artists to excerpt copyrighted works for their productions. Nowadays even incidental copyrighted material appearing in a documentary (e.g. a television that's visible while people are talking) is being tossed on the cutting room floor because filmmakers are threatened with lawsuits. Copyright has become so twisted that it now severely restricts innovation, creativity and speech rather than encouraging it. In this case, our unworkable copyright law has kept "Eyes on the Prize" out of homes and classrooms, depriving us of a crucial historical record.
Last week Lawrence Guyot, a prominent civil rights leader with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, told the Washington Post, "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... I would call upon everyone who has access to 'Eyes on the Prize' to openly violate any and all laws regarding its showing."
So, are these community screenings civil disobedience?
Not at all. The First Amendment and the doctrine of "fair use" clearly extend to include the right to distribute a film of such important historical significance as Eyes, when such a film is otherwise unavailable. The history of the Civil Rights Movement is simply too important for us to let its most comprehensive documentary languish in copyright purgatory.
But that doesn't mean that the law shouldn't change. Our present copyright clearance environment forces filmmakers to pay exorbitant fees and to go through piles of paperwork before their films ever see the light of day. Consequently, many works of art will never be released or even attempted and that weakens our culture and our shared history. We need to move back to the original purpose of copyright and find ways to ensure that creativity is supported rather than unnecessarily stifled. And Congress should positively reaffirm the fair use rights of the public... so that "free speech" doesn't just mean the right to hire a lawyer.
How You Can Help
If you can host a screening sign up here. You can also look at the list of screenings to find one near you. And please tell as many people as you can about this project; efforts like this succeed because of word of mouth.
About Downhill Battle
Downhill Battle is a non-profit organization based in Worcester, MA that is organizing Eyes on the Screen. The goal of our organization is to support participatory culture and bring positive change to the music industry. Downhill Battle launched in August 2003 to build a grassroots, public-interest voice for ending the corporate record label monopoly and putting culture back in the hands of artists and fans. Our outreach campaigns have reached millions of people and have helped create a more balanced debate on these issues. To learn more about what we do, visit our front page and subscribe to our RSS Feed. If you have a question or suggestion about Eyes on the Screen, feel free to email us at eyes@downhillbattle.org.
James Forman, a prominent civil rights leader and executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee regretfully died this year on January 10, 2005. A contemporary of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., Forman was featured in "Eyes on the Prize" and many say his influence on the civil rights movement was never given adequate recognition. You can listen to James Forman speaking in the film 