Film Threat 2008 SXSW Guide

As this documentary film unfolds, viewers are drawn into an intimate family struggle. Tom Luckey is coping with recent and dramatic changes in his life. Handsome, outgoing and wildly creative, Tom approaches life with utter abandon. A builder of interactive art, he has spent his career making furniture that was more inclined toward sculpture than function, wooden merry-go-rounds that he hauled into Central Park and enormous sculptures for children to climb. Then at age 65, Tom tumbles through a window in his bathroom and lands on the floor of the tiled dinning room a story below. He damages his second vertebra and becomes paralyzed below his neck. Tom spends months in rehab. When he emerges he can move only his head, but his verve is much the same. He wants to get on with life and finish the enormous climbable sculpture he had been commissioned to build at the Boston Children's Museum prior to his accident.

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride. A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.