SXSW Review: ‘RiP: A Remix Manifesto’

We actually stumbled into this movie when ‘Made in China’ was sold out, and I couldnt be more happy about that fact. ‘RiP: A Remix Manifesto’ is at its core a documentary about a mashup DJ named Girl Talk who takes a bunch of songs and mixes/mashes them together to create epic, danceable versions of the song. The question really comes up about whether he is doing something illegal and if so why is it illegal?

Most of the songs that Girl Talk makes will have samples of other songs, but after he is finished with them they could barely be considered the same song. Think of it like this: What if when the internet was created they put some copyright on the speed of the internet through dialup and no one even tried to make hi speed because of legal implications, we would all still be rocking 56k modems and the image you see above would still be loading! Those are the sort of the same kind of thoughts Brett Gaylor invokes with this documentary that exploits the questionable and sometimes laughable copyright laws. Did you know that Warner/Chappell owns the rights to the Happy Birthday song? In order to use it in a film you have to pay upwards of $10,000, now does that not seem a bit ridiculous?

Brett explores all kinds of copyright issues from music, to Mickey Mouse and how Disney at one point encouraged and even ripped things in their early cartoons. The best thing about the documentary is that they have made it public, you can download it, remix it and make your own version of the film. You can even show it publicly without fear of the legal hammer coming down upon you. If you want more information on how to see this doc, or participate in showing it go to http://ripremix.com. Here is the trailer as well for those interested:

Overall rating: 5 out of 5