Public Performance Rights
From time to time we get students and other UW community members asking if they can show one of our videos at their event, e.g. a film festival. While we own the actual DVDs or VHS tapes in our collection we do not (for the most part) own the copyright to the films themselves. Most of the videos we have cannot be shown in a public (that is, non-classroom) setting without first buying something called Public Performance Rights (PPR). This can be very expensive, especially for mainstream titles.
With that said, we DO own PPR for documentaries from a number of distributors (see below). Films from these distributors can (for the most part) be shown in a non-profit, no charge, educational setting, that’s not advertised to the public.
Distributors:
- Annenberg/CPB - Educational and instructional videos covering such areas as arts, education, foreign languages, literature, sciences and social sciences.
- Bullfrog Films - Independently-produced videos on environmental issues, including the areas of ecology, agriculture, indigenous peoples, women’s studies, genetics, sustainable development, community regeneration and marine biology.
- California Newsreel - Films and videos on topics such as race and diversity, African American life and history, as well as African feature films and documentaries.
- Cinema Guild - Documentaries from around the world, covering such topics as health, the fine arts, social science and sciences as well as world cultures.
- First Run Icarus - Independently produced documentaries, covering a wide range of topics and areas of the world.
- Films for the Humanities & Sciences - A large selection of videos on a wide range of subjects.
- Filmakers Library - Documentary films and videos covering many subjects, such as, but not exclusively, anthropology, art, psychology, sociology, women’s studies, and multicultural issues.
- Media Education Foundation - Documentaries that encourage critical thinking and debate on the issues and role of media in contemporary society.
- Women Make Movies - Works by and about women, including documentary, experimental, animation, dramatic and mixed-genre films.
Send us email
Phone: (206) 543-6051
Last modified:
Monday November 03, 2008
(tcj)
