Brian Flemming - Activism

Activism

In addition to working in film and theater, Flemming is an activist on copyright issues. He has released Nothing So Strange as an “open source” project, which means all of the raw footage that makes up the film is released without copyright restrictions for anyone to use. The final cut of the film, however, remains protected by copyright.

Flemming founded the organization Free Cinema, which encourages feature filmmakers to create films under two rules:

1. No money may be spent on the production, and
2. The film must be released under a copyleft license.

Flemming claims that filmmaking can now be “as inexpensive as writing novels” and that the copylefting practice is a way for new artists to gain notice and distribution in a marketplace dominated by large corporations. Free Cinema was inspired by the Free Software Movement, which is guided by similar principles of freedom. Flemming is also the owner and operator of Fair Use Press, which distributes e-books critical of public figures such as Bill O'Reilly and Arnold Schwarzenegger for their stance on intellectual property law.

During the 2007 Slamdance film festival, Flemming, who had been invited to sit on the festival's documentary jury, saw a demo of the video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! and hearing about it having its nomination pulled by the festival's founder, convinced fellow jurors to award it a "Special Jury Prize" for Best Documentary (an unofficial award not endorsed by the festival). The festival's founder, Peter Baxter, later told Flemming that legal considerations prevented SCMRPG from receiving the award.