RiP!: A Remix Manifesto

Brett Gaylor's documentary is about how the idea of copyright cracked in the internet age. At its centre is Girl Talk, who makes music entirely out of samples of other people's songs. The legal standing of that music is contested and its audience is large. From there Gaylor argues that culture has always been made by copying and transforming. The film also brings in Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons, the writer Cory Doctorow, and Gilberto Gil, the musician who was then Brazil's minister of culture. The production behaved in line with its own argument: Gaylor put the raw footage online and anyone who wanted to could make their own cut. It won the audience award at IDFA in Amsterdam in 2008. The case for the other side gets less room in the film.