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Canwest News Service
While many of us visit YouTube for its videos of cats playing the piano or the latest celebrity scandal, Mira Sundara Rajan casts her gaze on the politics behind the digital platform.
Rajan, a UBC professor and Canada Research Chair in Intellectual Property Law, trains her eye on the video makers as much as their craft: Who made the short piece? Are they acknowledged? Is the work being treated with integrity?
Those concerns are dominant in the research that fuelled her new book Moral Rights in New Technology (Oxford University Press).
Set for release in 2010, the book explores how vulnerable creators of film and video can be to copyright infringement — or a complete appropriation of their work.
They'll be part of the panel Is You- Tube Killing Canadian Culture: Will the Canadian story go viral? Or will it buffer forever? Dec. 3 at the Whistler Conference Centre. The talk is just one of many events in the Whistler Film Festival's industry forum.
With the move into digital movie and videomaking, moral rights are more important than ever, says Rajan, who speaks alongside UBC theatre department head Jerry Wasserman, National Film Board producer Tracey Friesen and filmmaker Ron Mann.
"The questions that YouTube raises are quite provocative. In this digital age, it's been a free-for-all," says Rajan.
"[With the introduction of You-Tube] there's a huge potential for promoting and disseminating culture in a way that didn't exist before. But we also have to consider letting people enjoy their reputation, and to be able to be recognized for the quality of their work."
The festival's industry forum touches on topics ranging from the role of culture in technology to spotting trends in filmmaking to perfecting the pitch.
Filmmakers can meet leaders of their industry at one-on-one meetings and roundtable sessions, master classes, a series of panels and case studies on new media and independent film, and an intense two-day workshop for script writers presented by the Canadian Film Centre. New filmmakers will get the chance to perfect their pitches with Pitch Fest West.
Canadian Television Fund moderator Valerie Creighton will oversee the Whistler Summit, a discussion of global entertainment trends between industry heavyweights, including the principals of Twentieth Century Fox and Electronic Arts.
For more on the events at the industry forum, visit whistlerfilmfestival.com.
mfhill@vancouversun.com
