Category Archives: Film Society

Jim Crow Film Society is no more.

Posted on by January 4, 2018
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With the costs of acquiring rights to show films, the restrictions placed on ‘film societies’ which are not permitted to charge per visit and thus must rely on annual membership in order to obtain better rates on screening rights, plus the cost of hall hire, JCFS has had to shut down. We went down the legal track. We probably could have got away with it ‘on the black’, under the radar, but we didn’t want to go that way. You can’t (legally) just buy a DVD in a shop and then show it in public: you have to buy screening rights to do that. It was costing us more than $200 per night to put on a show.

There is a small amount of funds remaining in the JCFS coffers which will be applied to other community projects (including the production costs of our esteemed organ ‘The Chronicle’) according to the rules of the JCFS. Some has already been applied to The Chronicle.

Changes to DVD rights agreements

Posted on by January 4, 2018
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This information is from ACOFS (Australian Council of Film Societies) Bulletin, July 2012.

“Discussions with some DVD distributors are under way to deliver a DVD rights process that is easier to use and fairer to the film societies and distributors. Feedback from film societies has illustrated that the charges for DVD rights are too high for the smaller society but the larger film societies may not find it difficult or
unreasonable to pay more for the DVD rights.

While distributors would like to see a price increase across the board, they may be willing to balance this by retaining the current prices for the mid range societies or even offering a bargain price for the smaller ones. Recognising that some societies use many more DVDs than others, we are also discussing the possibility of agreeing on a “blanket licence” along the lines of a bulk discount arrangement.

There will be more details to follow in later Bulletins, but for the moment I wish to thank all societies that have submitted DVD usage stats with their annual affiliation applications as these have allowed us to focus on the real needs of the societies and put real figures to the estimates under discussion.”