Gleb Sidorkin, Voices - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 7:50 - 1 Comment

The Art Market: Matthew Barney and the Future of Film Financing

By Gleb Sidorkin

For a beginning filmmaker taking stock of the legal situation in which moving images find themselves today, there are two discreet dangers. They arrive at opposite ends of the “production value” scale that ranges from DIY to Hollywood. The first is the prohibition (or the perception of prohibition—a chilling effect) on the use of appropriation. The second is the economic threat of piracy and the wane of traditional, controlled distribution methods such as the film theater on which the Hollywood business model is predicated. In this article, I will explore the “Art Market” as a potential legal model through which filmmakers can both skirt copyright law for purposes of artistic appropriation, and as an economic model by which filmmakers can continue to finance big-budget movies without relying on the controlled distribution of copyrighted facsimiles. Continue…