RiP: A Remix Manifesto, which recently screened in Austin, TX at South By Southwest, stitches together interviews with copyright law obeyers and disobeyers, animated sequences, and live footage of mash-up music artist Girl Talk, who we find is by day a research biologist by the name of Gregg Gillis. Incredibly pertinent for the times, this issue of copyright law (see more about the AAFF lecture from Thursday) could easily be presented densely and end up convoluted, but instead RiP is youthful, fun, and snappy while still thoroughly presenting the various dimensions of copyright law conflicts in the present times. Most intriguingly Gaylor proposes a parallel between Gillis' musicianship--in which he takes pieces of other people's songs and remixes it into a new work--with his career as a scientist, in which he takes bits from other scientists' research and tries to piece it together into a something new. Intellectual property laws protect scientists from being able to freely use others' work, and thus Gillis says that these laws stifle scientific discovery and advancement in the same way they limit artistic creation.

My favorite moments of booing: when we saw Paris Hilton having her picture taken with Gregg and when an archival news interview with Lars Ulrich complaining about Napster came on the screen. Moments of cheering: hearing Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig propose that we need to adapt the copyright law because it is outdated, mention of the Creative Commons (non-profit that wants to promote creative sharing of works of art and music), and the appearance of festival guest Mark Hosler of Negativland, who Gaylor described as a "professional sh_t disturber." For a Saturday night, a social issue documentary could have been a bit too dense, but Girl Talk's dance music, along with the audience's booing and cheering, kept it alive.