SOC/SIS's Aufderheide wins
career achievement award
By Matt Getty

(From American Weekly, Dec. 5, 2006)
2 of 2 pages
Not taking that risk doesn’t just cost filmmakers money, Aufderheide found in a 2004 study she completed with Washington College of Law professor Peter Jaszi; it costs filmmakers films.

“We were less concerned with the dollar cost, but more concerned with the cost to the imagination,” Aufderheide explains. “The worst thing we found was that filmmakers just decided not to do certain projects.” Specifically, her Rockefeller Foundation–funded report found documentaries offering media criticism were increasingly in short supply due to the lack of understanding surrounding fair use.

Her work didn’t stop with that study, however. Teaming with Jaszi, the IDA, and dozens of filmmakers, Aufderheide boiled down the legalese of fair use copyright law into an eight-page pamphlet documentarians greeted with near biblical fervor. “I feel like I died and went to independent filmmaker heaven,” said Beyond Beats and Rhymes director Byron Hurt during a ceremony celebrating the publication’s release last spring. “This is a great day for filmmakers, but more importantly, it is also a great day for the public,” declared Alternate Media Center cofounder George Stoney during the same ceremony.

Such excitement stems not only from the way the statement simplifies the issue for documentarians, but also from the way it simplifies the issue for those who might stand in their way. “One of the factors the courts consider in deciding whether fair use applies is whether the material was used in good faith,” explains Jaszi. “Now we have evidence of what documentary filmmakers believe is reasonable and balanced use. Now we have evidence of good faith.”

Beyond the Best Practices in Fair Use statement, which has now been given to thousands of filmmakers, distributors, and organizations, the IDA award recognizes Aufderheide’s extensive writing and teaching about documentary film. The director of AU’s Center for Social Media has penned numerous articles and books on documentaries, served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival, and opened hundreds of students eyes to the complexities of the genre’s history, ethics, and techniques.

“Pat Aufderheide’s work as a journalist, policy analyst, author, and professor has demonstrated her deep commitment to social justice through creative use of media,” says Sandra Ruch, executive director of IDA, which represents nearly 3,000 film professionals in 50 different countries. “Our members, as well as the public at large, benefit from her work in many direct and indirect ways.”

For Aufderheide—like the filmmakers themselves—that means much more than the honor she’ll receive in LA’s Directors Guild of America Theatre later this week. “Documentary filmmaking is a vibrant part of the media that fuel public knowledge and action, and it is a great honor to have my scholarship about it be recognized,” she says. “I also hope that the award can draw attention to the parts of my work that can be most immediately helpful to filmmakers.”

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