[KineJapan] Edward Yang's Yi Yi

[Stephen Cremin]

There’s confusion here over regional rights.

Pony Canyon were the major investor of the film, and may have financed it
100% (or with some small help from Tokyo-based Omega Project), after other
investors pulled out after the Asian financial crisis. The project was
announced at a press conference in Busan as one of three films by Stanley
Kwan, Edward Yang and Iwai Shunji.

So, yes, Pony Canyon likely own the global rights to Yang’s film.

While Naoko asks for the “currently copyright holder”, what she needs is
“currently copyright holder in the United States”. I’m travelling and don’t
have access to last year’s Busan catalogue, but the information inside may
not be relevant since the “Print Source” is likely a local (not US)
copyright holder or Pony Canyon itself.

Pony Canyon did early on hire London-based sales agency Capitol Films to
handle the film’s global rights, but I’m sure that deal has expired.
Similarly, Capitol initially licensed it to Winstar Cinema in the US, but
it’s unlikely that contract lasted more than 15 years, and rights would
have reverted to Pony Canyon.

Perhaps the “unspecified complication” was the screening fee. If there is a
US copyright holder, Pony Canyon will tell you, since it’s not worth their
trouble to collect small screening fees from around the world for one-off
screenings, particularly late in a film’s life. You’ll likely have to pay
something to screen it.

For many years, the hardest place to see the film was actually Taiwan,
where there had been no public screening or release. But there was a very
cheap (legal) Hong Kong DVD - I paid HK$18 or US$2.35 - that film-lovers
would bring back. It later screened as the closing film at a Hou
Hsiao-hsien-organised festival; only I think after Yang’s death.

In summary, contact Pony Canyon (intl at ponycanyon.co.jp). This is one
example where they absolutely deserve any screening fee since they really
stepped up and got this film made when they could have easily dropped the
project. It only exists because of them. The Iwai film - a dystopian
English-language science fiction film - was never made.

Stephen


On 22 March 2016 at 08:48, Eija Niskanen <eija.niskanen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Naoki,
> there was an Edward Yang retrospective at Busan Film Festival last year,
> so they must know the rights owner.
> Best,
> Eija
>
> Naoki Yamamoto <naokiya at gmail.com> kirjoitti 22.3.2016 kello 9.26:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I know this might be a bit off-topic to to this forum, but could anyone on
> the list tell me who’s the current copyright holder of Edward Yang’s *Yi
> Yi *(2000)? I plan to screen this wonderful film at UCSB in this coming
> May, borrowing its 35mm print from Yale’s film archive. But the Yale’s
> archivist recently told me that there’s actually some unspecified
> “complication” with the rights to the film, and for this reason, Pony
> Canyon, the Japanese comply that claimed to be the film’s copyright holder,
> could not give them permission for a screening back in 2014.
>
> Are there anyone who recently screened this film at a film festival or any
> public setting? If so, could you kindly help me solve this complication?
>
> All the best,
> Naoki
>
> Naoki Yamamoto
> Assistant Professor
> Film and Media Studies
> University of California, Santa Barbara
> yamamoto at filmandmedia.ucsb.edu
>
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