This article argues that the authenticity of real-life images (instead of reenactments) in documentaries is essential, and powerful restrictions on fair use are increasingly erasing the real images from our film culture. Images and video clips, the backbone of documentaries, are increasingly in the hands of high-priced corporate archives. This fact, coupled with the fact that rights are often cleared for only very short periods (thanks to the advent of DVD technology) is severely limiting the leeway filmmakers have in producing genuine cultural products.

This article, appearing in Wired Magazine, describes ongoing grassroots efforts to make Eyes on the Prize available to the masses once again. Locked from DVD production and TV screening due to copyright issues, new copies of Eyes on the Prize are currently not able to be sold. To counter this restriction, a group of file-sharing activists associated with Downhillbattle.org is posting the documentary online. The files will be made available through BitTorrent for downloading via the Internet. In conjunction with this action, a public screening of the film has been scheduled in Washington DC.

This article from Wired News details the ongoing process to get Eyes on the Prize (legally) back into the public sphere. With the help of newly gained funds, the process of re-licensing the many copyrighted images and songs in the series has begun. With $850,000 in grants from the Ford Foundation and private donors, Eyes on the Prize will finally be able to be released on DVD. In a best-case scenario, Eyes on the Prize is on track to be re-released by the fall of 2006.

Documentary filmmaker Brigid Maher created this short film Stories Untold to accompany the arguments made in Peter Jaszi and Pat Aufderheide's report Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers. This link is a transcript of that film. A link to the streaming, broadband version of the film is available here in streaming .mov format. Speaking with documentary filmmakers, Maher gives the viewer a first-person look at the hardships of fair use clearance. In this film, it is readily apparent that even the simplest video clip or shortest song may cause a myriad of problems for filmmakers.

This article, from The Washington Post, highlights the specific copyright troubles beleaguering Eyes on the Prize. Eyes on the Prize, a documentary about the American Civil Rights movement originally aired on PBS in the 1980's in a serialized format. Since then, however, this film series has become a central part of the debate over fair use and copyright law. Many of the film's clearances for material have expired and the cost of renewing the rights would be several hundred thousand dollars. Consequently, the films cannot presently be publicly shown or distributed legally.