Independent filmmakers on Wednesday strongly criticized a decision by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to stop sending out copies of new movies in advance of the awards season in an effort to halt piracy.
The Independent Feature Project, which represents 9,000 independent filmmakers, said that the decision would severely hurt independent films and filmmakers.
In recent years, studios and independent companies have distributed copies of new movies on DVD and videotape before the Academy Awards season, to enable voters to watch the films at home instead of going to a theater or screening room. The so-called screeners have been especially beneficial to smaller independent companies, which cannot compete financially with the big studios but have earned numerous Academy Award nominations because many voters saw their films at home.
On Tuesday, the Motion Picture Association halted distribution of the screeners in an effort to curb piracy, a growing concern among studios.
The director Robert Altman said in a phone interview that his own films, like The Player and Gosford Park, as well as acclaimed independent movies like The Piano, Shine and Boys Don't Cry, would have failed to receive Academy Award nominations and would have suffered at the box office had advance copies not been available to voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
"The members of the academy would not have seen these films," Altman said. "There's so much opposition to this. I've been on the phone all day. It's got to get overturned. It will create this separation between two kinds of product: studio product and independent product."
"It's just a stupid assumption that this will stop piracy," he added.
The Independent Feature Project said in a statement that the ban on screeners was an "ill advised and hasty course of action." The group said that there were ways to stop piracy, including watermarking and individually numbering screeners so that those who seek to pirate films can be traced.
"We're very sympathetic to the issues of piracy," said Dawn Hudson, executive director of the Independent Feature Project/Los Angeles, "but the ramifications of this action by the MPAA are extremely damaging to the independent film community. They have just created more obstacles for independents to reach an audience."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
RSS