The Moral Rights of a Storyteller

     Droit Moral. That's french for Moral Rights. In basic, quasi legal terms, it means that a storyteller (writer, filmmaker, etc.) has an inherent right to control aspects of their work. What these rights are, specifically, varies from place to place, country to country. However, the essence of these rights are that the creator of the work (in the US this only includes 'visual arts') has the right to dictate how they're credited for the work, how/if the work may be altered, how the work is viewed/displayed...basically, it means no one can change the work without permission.

     This is not the same as copyright. For example, an artist can sell a painting and have the moral right to protect that painting from being painted over. As a filmmaker, these moral rights are a little harder to nail down since a film can be distributed in countless units whereas a painting usually is not. People make mash-ups of movies, re-edit them, and so forth. So, I have been asking myself, how do moral rights help and/or affect a filmmaker?

     If I make a film and then sell it to a distributor, they can't do things to the film that I don't feel appropriate, i.e. they can't take my family film and make a sequel incorporating heavy adult themes I don't like (even if I gave them the right to make a sequel). Now, most of the time, distributors will want to get the filmmaker to sign away their Moral Rights, along with all other rights they can get. Don't get me wrong, filmmaking is a business and securing rights is an important part of that business. A producer needs to get the rights from everyone involved so that he/she can go and market the film. However, Moral Rights, in my opinion, are something I would be resistant to sign away so easily. I understand contractually why distributors would want my Moral Rights to a film, as they would like to have the option to take the film in new directions should the markets go that way. But still, I feel like the artist who doesn't want to sell a painting only to come and find a new face painted over the one I'd painted originally.