Event
PHILADELPHIA CINEMA and MEDIA SEMINAR PRESENT
Auteurism on Trial: Hollywood’s 'Moral Rights'
From Douglas Fairbanks to Steven Soderberg, the U.S. legal system has treated Hollywood filmmakers as a special category of artist. When feature films have been translated to new media, from two-reel serials to home video, courts have consistently offered filmmakers unusually broad authorial protection for their works. In this presentation, Peter Decherney considers some of the reasons that filmmakers, and the Directors’ Guild of America, in particular, have been able to achieve special legal status, and I will consider some of the implications of their lofty perch for film on the internet.