The purpose of the Public Domain Film and Music Festival is to promote a greater understanding of copyright law among students training in creative disciplines. The festival provides an opportunity for student filmmaking teams to exercise their creativity while respecting the purpose of copyright law: to promote creativity.
Registered teams will have ten days to create an original screenplay, film, and musical score inspired by works recently entered in the public domain.
A broad selection of public domain works included in the festival are available on this website, but teams will be assigned only a few of these public domains works at the film festival's Launch Event. Learn more about how we will assign public domain works to each team on the Launch Event page on this site.
Entries will be judged according to the judging rubric available on this website. Please note that the integration of and inspiration from a team's assigned public domain materials weigh heavily on the judging rubric in most award categories.