Every year at NaFF, there are one or two documentaries that really stand out in my head as the most socially and politically relevant films I know I'll see all year. A couple years ago, it was Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink, which I've cited multiple times in this blog since seeing it (it is as fascinating content-wise as it is style-wise). And last year it was Flow: For the Love of Water. Those two films are about food politics and ecological consciousness as it pertains to consumerism-- topics near and dear to my heart.

This year's V.I.P. film, however, touches on concerns that I see relevant to the project of blogging and participation in digital internet media -- a thing that's also sucked up a very large portion of my thinking life. RiP: A Remix Manifesto is really and truly toppled, ass over teakettle, all the monuments to copyright law that I'd built in my head. It's a shame that the audience for this film consisted of only 7 people, because its argument is one that, if we are to move forward as a culture, creatively speaking, we simply must reexamine how we understand the concept of "intellectual property" before we lose all ability to add branches to that family tree that has been cultivated and nurtured by eons of creative minds before us.

Let it be stated that there is nothing new under the sun. And therefore, the concept of intellectual property is inevitably fallacious. Even my saying there is nothing new under the sun is so terribly un-new that it's attained aphoristic status.