CO CHERNIKOFF 1921 SINDERLAND PLACE

M.W. WASHINGTON DC 22036 (USA)

I GIVE MY FULL AND CONVINCED SUPPORT TO THE INITIATIVE

CF MY AMERICAN COLLEAGUES TO FINALLY PROTECT AND
DEFEND IN A DEFINITE WAY OUR WORK AS AUTHORS FROM ANY

FORM OF INTERFERENCE. INTERRUCTIONS AND ABUSE OF ABUSE

OF ANY KIND BY OTHERS. BEST WISHES

Like all European film directors, I am strongly behind you in your fight to establish and strengthen rights of authorship for film makers in the United States. I am sure you will present

the case for the directors' moral rights with eloquence and conviction.

But there is another side to this

issue: the question of the public's rights.

The vast majority of the audience sees movies of the past (and increasingly of the present) on television.

For them, the T.V.version is the film. It is the public that needs protection from being offered mutilated versions of creative work.

The only practical way to provide this protection is the kind of legislation that you are advocating: adherence to the Berne Copyright Treaty and the introduction of a strong mandatory moral rights clause.

All power to your elbow!

Yours sincerely,

Kmecker

KAREL REISZ

9 STIRLING MANSIONS. CANFIELD GARDENS. LONDON NW.6. 3JT

As a film director of more than 30 years' work in the industry
in Britain and recently in the United States I would like to
support, most seriously and urgently, the proposal that the
United States should join the Berne Convention.

It is now generally agreed that the true authors of any motion
picture are its director and writer. Theirs is the statement
and theirs is the creative responsibility and achievement.
Yet today, without the protection of the law, we find the
integrity of our work at the mercy as it has never been
before of manipulation by interests whose only motivation
is commercial exploitation.

The cinema is the great original art of the Twentieth Century.
The great film makers of our time rank with Mozart and
Michelangelo, with Whitman and Melville, as great creators
and communicators. Yet the works of film artists are
vulnerable, as are those of no other art, to spoliation and
deformation in the name of commerce. Creators of film in the
United States like their colleagues in Great Britain -
desperately need the protection of the Law. Such protection
is surely the obligation of any society which claims the name
of civilised. May the United States provide it: and provide
also an example which we in Britain may urge our government
to follow.

Limbay Anderson

LINDSAY ANDERSON

24 September 1987

September 24, 1987

Chairman of the President's Committee of the

Directors' Guild of America

1.

In American law film directors are not regarded as
authors or even as co-authors, King Vidor, John
Ford, Orson Welles and William Wyler

notwithstanding. They are therefore defenseless
against the continuing amputation, mutilation and
colorisation which are disfiguring our films and
preventing audiences from seeing the original
versions.

2.

In the seventy-six member countries of the Berne
Copyright Convention certain controls exist which
stipulate the inalienable moral rights of authors,
regardless of whether or not they had been working
for hire. Government legislation would therefore
seem to be the only possible protection of the work
of film directors. As a concerned non-American
writer and director I take the liberty of pleading
most respectfully for the need for protection of
our work, first by considering the possibility of
joining the Berne Convention and secondly to
introduce film directors and film writers as
authors or co-authors into American law. Perhaps
this would be a means to check the horrendous
abuses which, unless checked, will eventually
destroy the most valuable medium of the 20th
century.

Garold Pinter

Harold Pinter