How do images made by Western filmmakers cycle back to the source community?

Kopiraet, which in Bislama, the Vanuatu Pidgin language, means native copyright or collective authorship. The film KOPIRAET explores the boundaries of copyright and ownership (within documentary) in relation to Vanuatu. The film puts a light on the fragility of a documentary that attempts to deconstruct a colonial gaze, while the images are produced by Western filmmakers.

We return our edited footage filmed in 2019 to Vanuatu sharing it with several contacts and personal friends of anthropologist Hugo DeBlock, who is adopted by chief Johnson. With these clips we wish to start conversations about the ownership of the representation of friends and relatives of Hugo, the copyright of art works of Vanuatu now in the Louvre, the copyright of the colonizers of Vanuatu in the past and the present, the ownership of performances as they are enacted for the community of Vanuatu and/or for tourists, the copyright of the knowledge collected by Hugo Deblock, the ownership of our film, etc. We film the return of our footage to the main participants, who can shield images as they wish. At any moment, the participants can protect those images or prevent certain images from being shown.

Ambong Thompson is one of the participants, he is the director of the National Film and Sound Unit which is part of the Vanuatu National Museum and Cultural Center (Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta). This center grew out to become a model cultural center for the Pacific since the independence of Vanuatu in 1980. It has as its goal to archive all images that are made in the region and asks a permission fee to everyone who wants to film there. One cannot film in the country without this permit. By archiving images and by requesting a film permit, this center aids to preserve and decolonize the heritage of Vanuatu.The act of returning our clips serves as a starting point of conversations with the main participants about the importance of ownership over their images. These conversations also act as a vehicle to show how the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta operates, and archives images, protects cultural heritage and critiques the images made by Western filmmakers.

KOPIRAET explores the meaning of ownership and copyright, in the challenging context of the asymmetrical and messy relationship between the West and the Global South. But to what extent can this rebuttal resonate in a film primarily in Western hands? Despite fieldwork, positionality, reciprocity and ethical awareness of the power differentials, is it at all possible to go beyond the boundaries of exoticism, voyeurism, and exploitation?